EROTHANATOS 



AND 



SONNETS 



BY 



LEONARD WHEELER. 




NEW YORK: 
MELANCHOLY CLUB, 52 LEXINGTON AVE. 



FOR SALE BY 

JAMES MILLER, 779 BROADWAY. 
1882. 






Copyright, 1882, 
By LEONARD WHEELER. 



Trow's 

Printing and Bookbinding Company 
201-213 East i2ik Street 

NEW YORK 



TO 



M. E. B, 



PREFACE. 



The poem, Erothanatos, is to be understood as 
illustrating an interesting epoch in the life of an 
imaginary youth, one of natural piety, and devoted 
to the worship of the beautiful. He is a youth of 
solemn and thoughtful moods, of serious poetic 
aspirations, and keenly sensitive alike to the rap- 
tures of joy or woe. He yearns for the divine com- 
panionship of human wisdom, honor and truth ; but 
he meets no such spirits, and, believing virtue to be 
banished from the hearts of men, he moodily shuns 
their haunts. He walks the solitary twilight paths 
of the melancholy student, imbibing dangerously of 
the ancient vitiated wells of sophistry. In the ego- 



vi FREFACE. 

tism of intellectual enthusiasm he withholds scorn- 
fully from all human intercourse ; and delighting in 
the auroral ages of literature, and exalting the pagan 
philosophies to the empire of his reason, he darkly 
shuns the light of day. But in this ^studious isola- 
tion among the relics and traditions of antiquity, 
his companionless heart grows restless, and he en- 
joys no religious peace of mind. There still remains 
a void in his existence that must be filled ; there 
must still sound a key-note to harmonize the jarring 
chords of his life. He seeks solace ''in the pres- 
ence of the great company of the stars and the 
flaming constellations," and muses lonely through 
midnight solitudes in vain. But, in an hour of 
desperate thought, the knowledge that human love 
must fill the void, and a hiiman voice strike that key- 
note, *' on his vacant mind flashes like strong in- 
spiration." His mind conceives a beautiful ideal of 
womanhood to wed his friendless soul. He again 
seeks among women the embodiment of his vision, 



PREFACE. Vll 

but vainly, until he meets a child whose beauty and 
disposition promise the realization of his poetic im- 
agining. Enraptured, he beholds the development of 
her superb faculties and beauty. Self-absorbed, he 
blindly worships the idol ; when alas ! his flowering 
hopes are blighted in the bud. Death rends the 
delicate fabric of his love-consecrated dream, and 
the grave engulfs the object of his adoration. Thus 
desolated, he abandons himself to miserable grief 
and the fearful passion of hopeless sorrow. The 
poem intends to picture his feelings and thoughts 
from this stage of despair, through the contempla- 
tive changes of introspective analysis, through the 
chaos of scepticism, to the celestial hope and un- 
alienable faith in the after life of divine love beyond 
the grave. 

With the trembling acknowledgment of many 
faults, I offer this first literary venture to the notice 
of the public, with the prayer for only justice tem- 
pered with the gentlest quality of mercy. In conclu- 



viii PREFACE. 

sion, I wish to express my sincere thanks to my dear 
friends, James B., S. Arthur, and Edward H. Nies, 
N. Lattard, William Pfeiffer, and John G. Willson, for 
their united friendly interest and generous encour- 
agement. I also wish to express my indebtedness to 
Mr. R. H. Stoddard for his disinterested concern in 
the writer's behalf. The author subscribes himself 
gratefully, their obliged servant, 

LEONARD WHEELER. 

New York City, July, 1882. 



EROTHANATOS. 



EROTHANATOS. 



PROEM. 



There grew up in the night 

A peerless lily white — 
The golden morning star shone on its birth ; 

And, heavenly light arrayed in, 

A silent, wild-eyed maiden 
Sprang from the star, and kissed the flower on earth. 

The pale, sweet bud she pressed 

Close to her paler breast ; 
Her cold lips moved in prayerful whisperings ; 

But, in the morning gray, 

Her spirit passed away 
In the rustling music of receding wings. 



4 EROTHANATOS. 

Love Cometh and is gone, 

A star of early dawn, 
Ablaze with ardent day's unrisen fires ; 

Love Cometh up abloom 

In light that is her doom. 
And dieth as the morning star expires. 

O Star, why dost thou leave us ? 

O Love, how canst thou grieve us ? 
Bright Star, and brighter Love, faint not at morn ; 

But, Star, outshine the moon ! 

And face day's fiery noon, 
And, Love, live for a day as thou art born ! 

The sun comes forth in splendor ; 

The star, so bright and tender. 
Must perish in the heated morning's breath ; 

And earth's wan frost so chill is, 

That Love's delightful lilies 
Are withered on the freezing lips of Death. 

Bring pansies, and bring roses, 
And rosemary, and posies 



EROTHANATOS. 5 

Of pinks, and blue-bells from the blooming heather ; 

And in the morning chilly, 

Come, bury Love's dead lily 
Where the star died, so they both may lie together. 

And, through the cool green grasses, 

Will every wind that passes 
Chant low and sweet for Love, the bright day long ; 

And under the blue skies. 

With wild and streaming eyes. 
Pale maidens shall lament in cheerless song ; 



And from the earth all over 

Shall come full many a lover. 
His eyes astare with pain that cannot sleep ; 

And lips hard set and scornful 

Shall utter, soft and mournful. 
Complaints, and alien eyes shall melt and weep. 

For Love, sweet Love, is dead ! 
With lowly lying head 



6 EROTHANATOS. 

Deep in the grass, her virgin lily fading ; 

The light passed from her eyes 

With a star that left the skies, 
And shines again for no sad voice upbraiding. 

Farewell, Love, birth of Aidenn ! 

A Lily, Star, or Maiden, 
Bloom not, nor shine, nor sing through life's long 
years. 

As thy dim spirit waits 

Within Death's icy gates. 
To dissolve them with thy kisses, all in tears; 

Then our immortal eyes 

Shall ope on Paradise, 
And Death shall harm no more on land or sea. 

And all the dead shall rise. 

With re-awakened eyes, 
And see earth changed to heav'n, and all through 
thee. 

Farewell, Love, now we miss thee ! 
Farewell, Love, till we kiss thee. 



EROTHANATOS. 7 

When thou hast Death consumed, whose heart so 
chill is ; 

Farewell, Love, till we meet thee 

Amid thy stars, to greet thee 
And crown thee with thy resurrected lilies I 



EROTHANATOS. 



DEDICATION. 

For her remembrance, and to you who loved, 
Who still hold dear a dead one, cherishing 
A memory deathless as the soul, who cling 
To thoughts of her as grasses hold to earth, 
Their lives depending on the clasp they give ; 
To you who miss a beauty in the sun 
Because it throws one shadow less, and one 
Blue eye it brightens not : for you I frame 
These mournful lays. For you who pensive steal 
Away at dusk to meditate and mourn 
In some lone spot for one who nevermore 
Walks hand in hand with you, and cheers no more 
For you I sing, and to assuage my heart 
Of grief, I chant this melancholy Hymn. 

For you whose altar-fires are built on graves, 
Who kneel above the dead with weeping eyes, 
Whose hearts beat out your immemorial lives 



EROTHANATOS. ' 

In music consecrated to the dead, 

Whose thought religious, and whose pious care 

Is one mound ev'ry season visited, 

And made a paradise of thoughtful flowers : 

For you this song, this dirge for one I loved. 

O Memory ! still preserve her lineaments, 
The grace of motion, and the lovelier 
Expression of her smiling face that beamed 
As sunshine in the leafy days of June. 
O month of joy and beauty, solace me ! 
Thy youthful flowers bring rarest gifts to me : 
Remembrance in thy violets of her eyes, 
Remembrance in thy roses of her lips — 
The sweet child-mouth, rare as a singing flower 
That shed a fragrance, opening musical 
At dawn and closed at twilight with a song. 
O Nature ! pregnant with suggestions sweet 
Of her, adorn my thoughts ; make fair my songs 
With gentle scenes, remembered beautiful. 
Of thine in passed days, when, on thy slopes, 
And through thy woody dells, with summer blooms 
Of wild flow'rs decked and pied, I roved the child. 



lO EROTHANATOS. 

And had deep joy in thee that pleases now 
The man of sorrow, grown up from the child, 
But with his child-heart still ! Oh ! tune my verse 
With childhood's poesie — the artless art 
Unstudied, and best recompensed with tears — 
That warbling flows, as when a wild bird sings, 
Or sad, or glad, as the poor heart may be 
That beats within, the pulse of joy or pain ! 

O Nature ! aid, adorn, inspire the song 
With opening buds and birds, with shine and shower 
Through hill and dale, and ever let the breeze 
Blow freshly through and odorous ; not harsh 
As from the wracking seas, but soft as breath 
Blown by Arcadian shepherds in their flutes. 
And sad ; for this is still a song of Death. 
The flowers and birds depart as seasons change. 
The cheerful sun gives place to storm and rain. 
How cheerless ! when the wintry wind loud roars 
That bends the oak and beats the sapling down ; 
And so, O heart ! love's summer fled from thee. 
Its birds' and brooks' and breezes' harmonies. 
And flowers and sunlight fled from thee, with Her, 



EROTHANATOS. 1 1 

Nipped in the day when Love was young and fair 
Thy life is one long sigh, one Autumn day 
Unchanging in the heart, one sad, sad day 
Of rain and moaning wind and rotting leaves ; 
Decay despoils the hills, the woods, the plains, 
And fields are humid with the smell of death. 

O Soul, what pleasure is in living now ? 
Thy Spring and Summer passed thee by, thy Youth 
And Love evanished when the birds flew South, 
But not with them return thy Love and Youth : 
Lost Love and Youth return, alas, no more ! 
When snow-drops, open-eyed, hear bluebirds sing, 
Thy Love will waken not, nor sing to thee. 
Nor hear thy footstep in the new-grown grass : 
When Summer laughs and blushes in the fields, 
Thy Love will neither laugh, nor blush for thee ; 
The lilies on her grave will bend and weep, 
And thou wilt sound thy sorrows to the winds ; 
Thy Love knows not thy voice in woe or weal ; 
She thrills not in her winding-sheet for thee. 
Nor bursts again, like Spring, with flowers and 
song, 



12 EROTHANATOS. 

Through thy long years of sad autumnal days — 
Lost Love and Youth return, alas, no more ! 

To you I sing, dear mother of my loved, 
And I bewail with you whose silent tears 
Fall blighting on your cheeks, where Sorrow's 

hand 
Has set the ghostly roses of Despair, 
That pale and paler fade with spectral grief, 
As thought reverts to her — so lost ! so lost ! 
Oh, the long hours ! the joyless eves and morns ! 
Alas, the heavy heart that will not break ! 
And oh ! the storms that shake this reed of life, 
And hurricanes that smite, and yet nor rend ! 
I see you walk the lonely house, so still ; 
I know you pause and listen for a step 
That will not sound forever on its floors ; 
I bow with you and weep ; I hear you sob 
When some frail relic of her careless hands, 
Lost in a darkened corner, comes to light ; 
I see you press it to your lips and heart, 
And hear her soft name tremble in your voice, 
As sad and dear as her remembered love. 



EROTHANATOS. 1 3 

To you, this elegy of mournful thoughts, 
Drawn from my contemplation of her death, 
Who loved her stronger tha-n my weakness knew, 
And deeper than I shall love evermore, 
I dedicate, with sighs and many tears, 
These songs of tribulation, these low sighs 
Of weeping hopes within me, these desires 
That flicker through my spirit's night, to be 
A bright eternal star of righteousness, 
Fixed blazing in the orbed deeps of love. 

To you I dedicate this solemn song. 
Attempt ambitious, with a beam of hope 
To pierce the dark abysms of thought, to guide 
Its dim ghosts o'er the towering crags of Doubt 
Unto the land where Peace and Love abide. 
Of flowers and streams, and sun and stars ; to lead 
From haunted valleys of Despair and Pain, 
And dismal dens where Death lives horrible, 
Those spirits to the light and life of Hope, 
So that with looking up they may aspire, 
Aspiring, reach that pinnacle of Faith 
Where inspiration gives the finer sight 



14 EROTHANATOS. 

And sensibility that doth perceive 
In poised firmaments the power of God — 
Whose Intellect creates, sustains, absorbs — 
And feel the throbbing movement of His Life, 
The grand pulsating Heart of universe, 
Well-spring of souls and immortalities. — 
Celestial Origin ! in Thee we live 
And rise sublime, eternally to soar 
And shine, reflecting Thy magnificence ! 

Love never lived but was the prey of Death ; 
Life never loved that did not weep and mourn ; 
Heart never thrilled with tenderness of Love 
But it was sadly broken — ah, how soon ! 
For flesh is liable to hurt and harm 
Of bitter hate, mischance, neglect, and scorn 
That crush out all its sweetness, and devote 
Love's tender blossoms of fresh-springing hope 
To spoiling blight that sears it leaf and bud. 
But O Love ! Love ! despite all bitterness, 
Despite all tearful sorrows and despairs. 
Despite Death's ruin and the ravening grave — 
Still touch my heart, O Love ! and sanctify 



EROTHANATOS. 1 5 

My life with thy dear sorrow and sweet pain — 
With thy divine, pure passion, that my soul. 
Refined and chastened by thy power, may rise 
On winged thoughts above the dread of Death, 
And soar as far from man as near to God ! 
Then Love and Sorrow, starry sisterhood, 
And Pity, child of both, the tearful-eyed, 
Abide with me in shadow and in shine. 
To make my human sympathies as broad 
As earth, as grand as life, as deep as Death ! 

Alas ! among my brothers some there be 

Who shudder at the thought of being hurled 

To Madness through the gates of Grief ; therefore 

They fear to love, lest love should bring them 

pain, 
And, hard as stones, their hearts are never sad ; 
As thoughtless kine that stumble in the pits. 
They fall and sleep in unremembered graves. 
I would not change the kind and suffering heart 
Of sympathy, that feels another's woe ; 
Nor freeze the melting grief that through the eyes 
Dissolves in flooding tears — I would not change 



l6 EROTHANATOS. 

This nature for the purple of a king, 
For fame nor empire over all the earth ! 

I loved, but Sorrow came the guest of Love, 

And she has overshadowed all my life ; 

And in that shadow Love has fall'n asleep 

Upon a dewy couch of asphodels, 

And Death weeps over her distressed tears. 

Oh, come ye mourners ! gather round and weep ; 

Lament in sorry song ; she is no more. 

Bring pansy, violet, and rue to deck 

The altar of our grief ; sing sad the hymn 

Of Death, the dirge of Love sing sad and low ; 

Shed many tears upon the grassy mound ; 

Strew flowers that smile in June, but dew with tears 

Their scattered petals, for she is no more ! 

She sleeps, the beautiful, the loved, the lost ; 

Alas and woe, she will not waken more ! 

Sigh ! prayerful lips, and pour ! dark eyes, your 

floods 
That are, as April winds and April rains 
To Spring's green firstling sprouts, to this your seed 



EROTHANATOS. 1 7 

Of Love, that from its earth-blown, flower took wing 

When Death's chill winter froze its glowing life, 

And rose, borne on the breath of God, to heaven, 

To spring, for an eternal Summer's prime 

Of bloom and beauty, in His ripened fields. 

Your lamentation is not wasted here, 

Nor useless tears are shed by them that weep ; 

A heart, though darkly, silently it throbs 

And breaks for grief, is not unknown of God, 

And not unpitied of the hosts of heaven. 

Then weep, and ever weep ! for not in vain 

Your tearful tribute on celestial soil 

Is shed ; it nourisheth this flower of love 

That groweth strong, erect and beautiful : 

Unto its leaves of young affection rare, 

Your sighs are sweeter than the western winds 

That wander coolly through earth's garden-plots 

When sunny day relieves the parched fields. 

And starry Evening holds the thirsting buds 

To drink with open mouths delicious streams 

Of cooling dew, poured from her generous urns. 

Your sighs, like vesper-bells, melodious rise 

Above the chiming seas, through peaceful skies 



1 8 EROTHANATOS. 

Most beautiful, with singing stars of morn 

And voiceless moon ; a winged air of love 

That cheers your heavenly flower embowered in bliss, 

And swoons upon its heart, made 'ware of you 

And your inspired sorrowing that sweeps 

In a sad voiceful strain from earth to heaven ; 

As when a distant peal of organ pipes, 

Singing the master-music of a soul 

That loved and sorrowed, swells upon the ear 

Of one in sleep ; straightway his soul becomes 

Enravished of the sound, and loves and mourns 

Divinely with intense and rapturous joy 

That fills the spirit with a sense of pain 

Sublime, and elevates and glorifies : 

So your thoughts mournful penetrate the skies. 

Your voice is heard and known, and so her soul 

Is deeply moved and infinitely drowned 

In floods of sympathy with all your woe. 

Yet knows nor tears, nor ruth, nor passion's pain. 

Aye ! ye may weep, for ever pain and grief 

And torturing tears make havoc of your joys 

On this vext earth ; but these disturb no more 

When dust to dust has crumbled, when the heart 



EROTHANATOS. I9 

In death rests calm and painless, when the soul 

Leaves this corruptive body tenantless, 

Unlovely in decay ; and, as a flame 

That burns its coal to ashes, rises bright 

And pure into ethereal elements, 

And is resolved into the sphered skies, 

And doth become a portion of all sense 

And sound and sight perceptive, and all joy 

Of spiritual being changeless, one 

With God ; or of His firmaments a star, 

Or of some vast new w^orld a minister 

Of good, or agent, or intelligence. 

Or of His heav'ns a winged inhabitant, 

Or dweller in His Paradise of Souls. 

For all our dreams are dim-remembered scenes 

Of such existence ere the change of Birth, 

Or are prophetic visions of such Life 

Inherited beyond the change of Death. 

Behold ! these sleep-translations of the Soul 
Are not all idle dreams ; for lo ! we view 
Heaven's soft, undazzling landscapes blooming fair 
With dewy foliage of unfading green ; 



20 EROTHANATOS. 

Immortal groves with music in their leaves, 

And water-brooks where flowers that drop no buds 

Shed odorous blessings on the lucid airs ; 

Where winds sing vesper-lullabies divine ; 

Where twilight never fades, and breathes sweet rest 

And peace through darkling woods that seem to sleep 

Serenely in their shadows. Fair beyond 

Rise hills, slope dells and rivered valleys, all 

Transmitted beautiful. O happy dreams ! 

O blessed hopes, bright visions of the soul 

Reflecting infinite light through infinite darkness ! 

Ye stars upon the horizon of life ! 

Celestial fires ! the outmost lamps of heaven, 

That blaze through night to guide to perfect day 

This Soul that rises darkly out of death, 

And fearfully aspires to light and life 

Above the empyrean, one with God ! 

Still let us mourn the loved and beautiful. 
The lovely and the dead ; still weep for her ! 
Mourn that her eyes are dark, her heart is cold — 
The eyes that shone, the heart that burned with love — 
Weep for the eyes that cannot smile again. 



EROTHANATOS. 21 

And fill Death's chamber with a wailing sound 
Of woful singing, desolate and drear 
As lorn winds sobbing through November woods ! 
Weep o'er the grave of all your buried hopes, 
And bring your lonely dying hearts to break 
Above the relics of your perished love, 
Low-mouldering in the hollow caves of Death. 

But hush ! but hark ! let not thy purer grief 

Decline to sin and selfishness of heart ! 

Arise ! In solemn majesty of thought 

Enjoy the solace of thy visioned mind 

That views, beyond the shade of Death's eclipse. 

The full-orbed splendor, Immortality ! 

Our love for her grew up the fairest flower 
That flourished in the gardens of our hearts ; 
But Death frost-nipped the blooming buds, and sharp 
The sapless roots twinge painful in their bed. 
Still give bereavement voice, nor loud, nor harsh, 
Commingling wrath with love's divine regret ; 
God gave, and God hath taken — all is well ; 
So be our sorrow such as ushers loss 



22 EROTHANATOS. 

Religiously unto the change of Death, 
And for its consolation looks beyond 
The shadowy gates, above the firmament, 
Where winged souls pursue their upward way, 
Risen perfect from the chrysalis of Death. 

Be our religious care the memory, 

Our rites, commemoration of her love ! 

Resign what Death has charnelled in his crypts, 

And cherish only what was lovelier 

Than her dear lineaments entombed and dead — 

The spirit of the beauty of her soul ! 

For Beauty cannot die — not that which is 

The soul divine within the Beautiful ; 

Although it pass from sight, or seem to change 

Unlovelily, 'tis neither change nor loss. 

But a transmission of its elements 

Into a purer, grander, godlier sphere 

Which is all beautiful and all divine ! 

Death has no power upon the Beautiful ; 

But its frail habitation may corrupt 

When life departs that was its minister. 

And leaves the corse a loathsome, loveless heap. 



EROTHANATOS. 23 

This is its alteration — change of place , 

In life and thought and light unchangeable 

As the star-systems and their central suns. 

All aspiration, all sublimest thought, 

All sense of light and of harmonious sounds, 

And awe, and exultation, and the joy 

Of contemplating ocean and the sky, 

And birth, and death, and the great mysteries 

Of life, and all creation vast or fine 

Are of this element, and dwell in it ; 

For Beauty is both intellect and light, 

God visible in all, and part of all, 

Immortal life, and love, and loveliness. 

Then, Soul, arise in thy glad morn of hope ! 
Arise from thy dark dreams of deadly things — 
From thy long vigils in the place of graves, 
Thy solitary hours with Sorrow spent ! 
Arise, and make thy faltering music heard. 
If not by man, still in the fields and woods, 
By quiet rivers, and by silent lakes, 
'Mid rocks, ravines, and caves where echo dwells 
And hears and answers sylvan sound for sound ! 



24 EROTHANATOS. 

Still in the leafy haunts of solitude, 
On mountain, or in valley, sing thy songs ! 
Or on the ocean's wilderness of waves, 
Alone, still chant to his deep organ tones 
The melodies of thine own heart and life ! 
Or in the sun, or rain, or storm, or calm. 
On land or sea beneath, or moon, or stars. 
Or driving clouds, or clear or misty night, 
Or morn or noon, let still thy voice be heard 
For Love's sake singing ever piteously, 
Or rapt in exultations ! 

Rise, my Soul, 
And breathe thy lofty sorrow in grand thoughts 
And exaltations of the. power of Love 
O'er death and dying ! lift thy voice and sing 
Of highest hope, inspired by the flight 
Of thy dear love into the chartless depths 
Of Universe, and follow, on plumed wings 
Of contemplation, her involved path 
Through the abysmal, uncreated void 
Where germs and wrecks of worlds encumber Night, 
To where the outer coasts, like emerald suns 



EROTHANATOS. 25 

Of heav'n, blaze o'er the deeps, and splendoring 

swing 
In floods of their own light, to where the hills 
Are crowned with the citadel of God, 
Where crystal domes, inlain with ruby stars 
And crescent suns, their dazzling firmaments 
Expand, and thence unto the oracle. 
And past the shrine, and through the winged doors 
Into the presence of the Deity ! 

But veil thy daring eyes — abide the time 
Of thy departure patiently — return. 
And touch the sadder shell ! O spirit, blow 
Thy breath along soft reeds — the bird-like pipes 
That treble low, and warble in wild-wood, 
Or by bright stream a shepherd's holiday — 
Make music sweet and simple as the brook's 
Voice rural, babbling over sand and stones. 
Or feathered songsters singing to the leaves* 
Accompaniment of rustling melody 
In tree-tops rocked by summer gusts of wind ; 
Sing to the measures of the human heart. 
Divine concord, of love, and life, and death ! 



26 EROTHANATOS. 

For you, dear mother of my loved, I sing : 
Oh ! take the song baptized with salt tears 
That flow from my full heart through eyes grown 

dim 
With weariness of weeping and sad thoughts 
Of her, thy child, and my peculiar love ; 
Who, as the first flower of an early spring 
That melts away in mists of April showers, 
Rose laughing, then did languish and depart, 
Our young delight dissolved in sudden tears. 
Whiles seen to fade as we passed on to May 
And June, to find no joy in all the bloom 
Of Summer to acquit the grief of Spring — 
Nor odorous rose through all the splendid months 
To purge remembrance of the faint perfume 
Of that first flower of Spring that haunts the year, 
A ghost of memory passionless and pale. 

So take this song, this first bud of my Spring, 
So fraught with recollections of the loved 
And dead one ; take it to your inmost heart. 
And cherish its frail leaves that there may blow 
And blossom in the warm light of your love. 



EROTHANATOS. 27 

Though elsewhere blighted in the scornful blast 

Of cold dispraise, or withered by neglect ; 

Oh, take this child of nature to your breast ! — 

If it must fade, still let it nestle there, 

And there expire, to be remembered 

With her in your fond mother thoughts alone ! 



28 EROTHANATOS. 



From Death's dark spell and starless vault appalling, 
What Love can rescue, or what life reclaim 

thee ? 
In vain, thou spirit beautiful, we name thee, 

Beyond our last recalling. 

Alas, the orbed light of beauty ! mortal 

As thou, its splendid effluence filled and 

brightened ; 
Alas, paled star of love, thy lone beam light- 
ened 
Above Death's twilight portal ! 

Alas, we sleepless ! and alas, thou sleeping 

The dull and dreamless sleep, who wast our 

gladness ! 
Thou unresponsive or to joy, or sadness. 

And we, distressed and weeping ! 



EROTHANATOS. 29 

Thou canst not know the anguish of our waking 

From pleasant dreams to think thee lifeless 

lying : 
Alas, the streaming eyes ! the painful sighing 

That dooms our hearts to breaking ! 

Thou canst not feel the agony, the burning, 

The pangs, the bitterness of hopes consuming ; 
Thy cheeks are hollow-pale, erst radiant- 
blooming — 

Thy bosom knows no mourning. 

The grave's decay doth spread like snow-flakes o'er 
thee, 
White in thy lips, and through thy soiled hair 

shaken 
In drifts ; oh, thou shalt never start, and waken 
To grieve that we deplore thee ! 

The birds of every season sing above thee, 

Blithe neighbors to thy doorless, narrow dwel- 
ling ; 
They flit about the carven tablet, telling 

The stranger how we love thee. 



30 EROTHANATOS. 

Their mirth disturbs not thee ; thy form reposes 

So deep and peaceful, wliile loud winds chant 

over, 
And from the grass spring purple tufts of 
clover, 
And pansies, and wild roses. 

Beside thy grave, what gentle eye were tearless ? 

How gladly of life's burden would I shrieve 

me, 
And lay me down with thee, would Death re- 
lieve me 
Of days on-darkening cheerless. 



EROTHANATOS. 3 1 



PART I. 

What shall be said of thee since thou art dead, 
Beloved ? since thou hast bowed thy queenly head 
To throned Death ? since thou hast gone, and wed 
The monarch of the grave ? — what shall be said ? 

Dost know who kneels beside thee, coffined Clay . 
Whose kisses warm thine ashen brow so gray 
And damp and cold ? whose trembling fingers stray 
Among thy ringlets — loved one, canst thou say ? 

What spirit locks thy speech in her mute cell, 
To hear — as ocean-echoes of a shell — 
Its charmed music, like enchantment, swell 
Upon her ravished ears, delectable ? 

Oh ! such a voice was thine as called the flush 
Of rapture to the cheek, when songful gush 
Melodious brake — as sudden from a bush 
Trills sweet and clear the unexpected thrush. 



32 EROTHANATOS. 

But thy hushed lips can form no pleasant word, 
Repeat no song surpassing wild-wood bird ; 
No more thy notes, the sweetest ever heard, 
Shall stir our heavy hearts as once they stirred. 

For joy that was is pain, good changed to badness, 
And sweet to bitter, and calm thought to madness, 
And all our flowery ways that rung with gladness 
Are blossomless and dumb with frost of sadness. 

For Love is dead, and Life hath taken wing, 
And Death, with faded leaves self-crowned king, 
Doth stamp the season with his signet ring ; 
And lo, all beauty darkly vanishing ! 

O hapless Love ! O faithless Life ! O Death 
That kissed the lips of Love with amorous breath ! 
Seal, seal mine eyes with slumber, underneath 
The snow to sleep till Love awakeneth ! 

Ah me, the loneliness of hill and grove ! 
A solitary man, I mournful rove 
By tarn, and lowland lake, and haunted cove 
Ah me, what joy in living without love ? 



EROTHANATOS. 33 

Swift through the wood I flutter like a shade, 
As noiseless as the shadows of the glade, 
Till, of ray ghostliness grown half afraid, 
I flee back to that chamber, where, arrayed 

In blanched shroud, my loved one sleeps. The room 
Is darkened ; but through its sepulchral gloom 
I still perceive in her wan face the bloom 
Of loveliness, too soon to grace the tomb. 

And I can weep for thee, and I can wail. 
And smite my breast and hollower cheeks, more pale 
Than thine ; but can I save thee though I rail ? 
And will my passion aught with Death avail ? 

Ah no ! ah no ! with thy moist breath as soon 
Expect to waken from eternal swoon 
The corse to animation, or at noon 
Command the sun to give place to the moon. 

Ah no ; to loss thy stricken life inure ! 
Thou mayst bewail, but thou must still endure ; 
For grieving of the dead the only cure 
Is death, whose medicine is swift and sure. 



34 EROTHANATOS. 

Bereaved heart, and canst thou still contain 
This rising flood of sorrow swoll'n with pain ? 
Behold, thy Love lies low, and not again 
To rise, or laugh, or weep— behold Love slain ! 

Behold the pallid cheek, the closed eye ; 

The parted lips, no more to make reply 

Or question thee — break, heart ; in one wild cry 

Of lamentation ease thine agony ! 

What now remains of all thy blooming years 
Of love ? A withered ghostly leaf that sears 
Upon a sapless stem, and crackling veers 
In sighing winds and beating rain of tears. 

Thy flowers are dead ; thou weepest all alone 
In thy late Autumn ; joy has come and gone 
With fleeting Summer ; all glad birds have flown, 
And left thee cheerlessly to sob and moan. 

Weep, then, from dawn till dusk, from eve till morn ! 
Weep at the bier of Love so thin, and worn, 
And pale ! weep, for the funeral fires burn 
In field and grove ! weep, as thou art forlorn ! 



EROTHANATOS. 35 

For Love, fair Love the beautiful, is dead — 
She lieth stark — and Nature, widowed, 
Dons sack-cloth, heaping ashes on her head 
And groveling in the dust, her winter bed. 

And oh ! to sleep with her, and oh ! to be 
Folded in Love's cold arms all peacefully, 
And oh ! to wee-p no more, and oh ! to see 
No more of death, or pain, or misery ! 

My Love is dead ; her heart is cold and still ; 
I touch her cheeks — no more a rapturous thrill 
Of life inspires the blush, nor blue eyes fill 
With gleeful fires ; her face is dank and chill. 

I gaze into those sightless orbs, once fair. 
But no soft-glancing light of love beams there ; 
Instead, a vacancy, a stony stare 
Expressionless, that haunts me to despair. 

I turn away, o'erwhelmed with maddening grief — 
Out in the storm, .and, helpless as a leaf 
Whirled in the tempest merciless and deaf, 
I plead for consolation and relief. 



36 EROTHANATOS. 

I seek the ocean ; but its thundrous roar 

Of billows breaking on the cragged shore, 

Its salt spray on my lips, doth vex the more 

My desperate thoughts the dead preyed on before. 

The tumult adds confusion to my woe : 
I long to leap where yon black billows flow, 
And, as I shudder darkly to and fro, 
I fear my toppling reason's overthrow. 

Far seaward now in fearful gaze I strain 
Mine eyes : a ship is battling there in vain 
Through cleaving tide and clamorous hurricane, 
Then plunges dowm, all foundered in the main. 

Alas ! the barque will never more emerge 
From that deep grave, her winged course to urge 
On foreign voyage or homeward. — O'er the surge 
That swallowed them I shriek the seamen's dirge : 

** All buried in the sea, and deeply drowned. 
Ye sleep, ye mariners, in deathly swound : 
All wrapped in ocean-weeds, ye slumber sound. 
Dead as my hopes that perished homeward bound. 



EROTHANATOS. 37 

'' And oh, alas, the cruel, cruel cost 
Of loving ! Oh, my wrecked heart, tempest tost 
And sunken in despair, Death's storm-wind crost 
Thy galleon's path, and all I loved was lost ! 

''All deeply drowned, and buried in the sea. 
Sleep well, ye mariners that ship-wrecked be ! 
The dirge I sing for w^hat was lost to me 
By heart-wreck, on Life's ocean suddenly.'* 

Oh ! Death lurked in the tides when, sailing past, 
My barque of love sped merrily and fast, 
And, storming up before, he drave a blast 
That shattered carven hull and bannered mast. 

And where that barque went down, no trace was left 
To mark that it had been : the Sea, bereft 
Of that fair burden, moaned through many a cleft 
Among his isles, and sobbed o'er many a drift 

Of shell-strewn sandy beach, while evermore 

His waves beat ceaseless down the lonely shore ; 

For his glad days of happiness are o'er 

When Love's barque glode his laughing winds before. 



38 EROTHANATOS. 

O Death, that smote my Love in mid career, 
My barque of hope that sailed without a fear ! 
What wrecks hast thou engulfed this many a year 
Of tempests darkening thy long reign severe ! 

Behold ! in deep sea-caves the piled swarms 
Innumerable of ships in olden storms 
Long lost, and, scattered round, the fleshless forms 
Of crews whose ribs cradle the young sea-worms. 

Lo, decked with viny weeds, in watery alle3^s. 
The high-beaked prows of ancient pleasure -galleys, 
And, brimmed with bitter ooze, the jewelled chalice 
That flowed with love-pledged wines in southern 
valleys ! 

And there the limb-locked lovers still recline 
'Mid ocean flowers that blossom in the brine. 
Enclasped as when of old, with beaming eyne, 
They mingled and were one in love divine ; 

What time, wan Death ! thy 'whelming whirlwind 

smote 
Their lamps with darkness, and their swirling boat 



EROTHANATOS. 39 

Sunk down the abysm, never more to float, 
Or dance unto the piping south wind's note. 

Above thy stony charnels I have kept 
Long vigils of deep musing : I have crept 
Among thy vaults, and over them that slept — 
Interred unknown, unhonored — I have wept. 

Strange thoughts of these my dreamful hours have 

nourished ; 
I lived with them in fellowship and flourished 
Ages agone ; their young ambitions cherished, 
And loved, and scorned, grew old with them, and 

perished. 

I seemed to hear, as well-remembered tones. 
Their laughters, and their sobs and dying groans ; 
Meanwhile, deciphering their funeral stones, 
I trod the aged layers of mouldered bones. 

O Death, how varied and how rich thy spoils ! 
Thy breath the ripened grain with mildew soils ; 
Thy swift feet crush the hills, whence wines and oils 
Were plenteous, and make vain the peasant's toils. 



40 EROTHANATOS. 

Thy dread, invisible, and murderous foot 
Treads out thy vintage from the crushed fruit 
Of life — the heart of man, that, like a lute, 
Sings joyous, thou delightest to make mute. 

And Beauty, young and fair, with loving eyes. 
Adorning Youth as stars in twilight skies 
Adorn the heav'ns, is borne a ravished prize 
To thy black altar's gloomy sacrifice. 

Thy shade eclipses and thy touch annuls 
Our starry thoughts as thy invasion dulls 
The intellect ; thy deadly poison lulls 
To sleep the Powers dethroned in our skulls — 

These temples that enshrine the god-like gift 
Of Genius, strong with daring thoughts that drift 
And dazzle on the dark, till through the rift 
Of reason inspiration streams, to lift 

The Soul's exalted vision, and then flashes 
The lightning, revelation, and it dashes 
The mind with wisdom's fearful fires, till crashes 
Thy dread bolt, and we shiver into ashes. 



EROTHANATOS. 4I 

Freedom's grand commonwealths and Slavery's 

thrones 
Avow thee equal Lord with tears and groans ! 
With graves thou hast intrenched all the zones — 
The continents are crumbled dust of bones. 

The mountain and the plain, the stream that laves 
His shores, the land, the vaster sea that paves 
His treacherous tides with blue and smiling waves, 
Are thine, and hide innumerable graves. 

Men rise and fall, and generations sweep 
As surge on surge, from darkling deep to deep. 
And leave no trace to mark wherefrom they leap, 
Or whither tend, or where they sink to sleep. 

We but exist between the mysteries 
Of life and death, and all that vision sees 
We understand not ; all our faculties 
Assert in vain stupendous theories. 

We know we are ; but what, we cannot know, 
And why, 'twere vain to guess ; we thrive and grow 
In pride, we vaunt our power and wealth, when lo 1 
Death, and the grave's eternal overthrow ! 



42 EROTHANATOS. 

Nor worth avails, nor beauty, nor the breath 
Of pleading prayer, nor love that travaileth 
With unborn joy, nor virtue without scath 
Avails to win an hour's respite of Death ; 

Else her I mourn with ever- rankling smart, 
The Virgin beautiful, with tearful art 
Of love had charmed thy poison-barbed dart, 
And touched to kindness thy remorseless heart. 

Insatiate, must thou ever flood and stain 
With innocent blood of the untimely slain 
Thy reeking altars ? must thou still maintain 
Tyrannic conquest, and all life enchain ? 

And still bold youth and timid maid must shrink 
Upon thy yawning grave's disastrous brink, 
With driveling Age to dreadly plunge, must drink 
The Lethean wave, and coldly, deeply sink ? 

Thou hast oppressed the earth from age to age, 
The doomed earth, through Sin thy heritage ; 
Oh ! thou hast writ thy record's fearful page 
With blood of King and Poet, Priest and Sage ! 



EROTHANATOS. 43 

And helplessly lie broken at thy feet 
The noblest hearts of men that ever beat 
With wisdom, truth, and song, and valor's heat, 
And woman's; framed for love, however sweet. 

Our feasts are spread for thee with bread and wine : 
The hand that brims the cup, the eyes that shine 
With fervor's fire, the maidenly divine, 
The pure, the beautiful, all, all are thine. 

The minstrel, as of battle-fields he sings. 
And glories of old knights and Avarrior kings 
And ladies fair, swoons o'er the orphaned strings, 
And never more his wild harp's music rings. 

Thy fingers clutch the jester in his mirth, 
The scorner in his scorns — oh, what of worth 
And learning sparest thou ? Ah, there is dearth 
Of heart in thee, Malignity of earth ! 

Thou stealest like a frost, and silentness 
Dwells chilling in the cheek thy hands depress ; 
And where thy wing waves dark and cumberless, 
The affrighted soul of Beauty vanishes. 



1 



44 EROTHANATOS. 

Thy face we know not, nor thy form of limb — 
Thou mayst be glorious as the cherubim — 
But oh ! thy handiwork is ghastly, grim. 
And loveless are the eyes thou makest dim. 

From nothing beautiful canst thou withhold ; 
The meadow-daisy dieth in the cold. 
And youth, and maid, and dame, and patriarch old 
Decline to thy infections manifold. 

We cannot, dread One, baffle thy delight 
In ruining the fairest with thy blight ; 
Thou stingest like a viper day and night, 
And loveliness evanishes from sight. 

But this is not the end of Beauty's bloom, 
And Love expands in light beyond the gloom 
Of thy confinement, passing to relume 
The spirit dimly rising from the tomb. 

Beauty and Love, whatever changes be, 
Exist twin heirs of immortality. 
And with the Soul — celestial Trinity — 
Out-soar the planets and escape from thee. 



EROTHANATOS. 45 

So, Death, thy triumph is alone the scars, 
The flesh untenanted, the gloom that bars 
The eyes, and wormy white decay that mars 
The cheeks : the soul must still survive the stars. 

Then why these burning tears and pangs within, 
O grief-embittered spirit ? Wouldst thou win 
Release of memory from what hath been 
Thy holier joy through tempting years of sin ? 

Nay ! bury her, and hush the woful clang 
Of hollow bells ; the dear remembrance hang 
In thy heart's temple of the songs she sang, 
The words she spake, the girlish laugh that rang. 

And darken not thy home, O Soul, with wrath — 
Let in the sunshine lest dark passion scath 
Thy life's thin walls ! God builded thee, and hath 
All right to pluck thee or thine from His path. 

He shaped this spotless maiden for love's sake ; 
He touched her petal eyelids till, awake, 
Her blue eyes pierced thy soul; but if He make 
Superior loveliness, shall He not break ? 



46 EROTHANATOS. 

O Silence, kiss these lips ! O heart, inurn 

Thine ashes of regret, and mutely yearn 

For calmness — practise speech of prayer— aye, burn 

Incense — and reverent acquiescence learn ! 

Flow, Grief, and so thy channel deeper wears 
Within and murmurs not, draw all these tears 
To quench my burning heart ; for hope that sears. 
And pain that blooms, are mine through fruitless years. 

We dwell not here together, Soul of me. 
These changing years — ephemera that see 
A summer day's delight, and end — nay ! we 
Must face harsh winters for eternity. 

We plant with sweat, and labor in the croft 
For harvest while the sun and moon are soft ; 
We dream of fruits autumnal, but how oft 
To reap that vanity the Preacher scoft. 

My tearful sister, haggard Misery, 
Thou hapless nun ! abide and mourn with me, 
Beseeching Heaven that thou and I may see 
Christ's Grail, and drink a draught from it, may be ; 



EROTHANATOS. 47 

And, in the rapture of celestial vision, 

Behold the end of our unhappy mission 

On earth, and thenceforth hold Death in derision, 

Knowing we pass the grave to life Elysian. 

Nor shall we doubt again, and where we tript 
Nor stumble more ; but clasp the faith that slipt, 
Unfalteringly — for Cross, and Shrine, and Crypt 
Blazon the Cup 'tis legended He lipt. 

When we are shaken with the sudden grief 
Of losing one whose life we deemed not brief, 
Jehovah ! minister to our relief. 
Who grovel in despair and unbelief. 

We would invoke Thy name ; yet in the blast 
Of self-contempt stand mute, and see Love cast 
Deep in the charnel-house, and we go past 
In madness sobbing : " God, is this the last ? " 

Nay, nay, my Soul ! this shallow brain did rave 
With sceptic thoughts that overwhelmed, and drave 
Thy Reason into bondage where, a slave. 
She dreampt that Love was vanquished at the grave. 



48 EROTHANATOS. 

She heard the whisperings of many a ghost 
That sagely lied; but they misled her most 
That spake the text upon her chains embossed : 
" The dead are earth of earth and ever lost ! " 

For oh ! what heart that ever felt Love's rare, 
Divine, immortal spell, would, impious, dare, 
Above this form, with wailing of despair 
Cry out : *' My Love is dead and endeth there ! " ? 

When through thy mind — as doth a foul wind blow 
Up dismal cloud and flood — false teachings flow. 
That drench Truth's sacred lights, and overthrow 
Religion, thou art wrecked in seas of woe. 

Wide, deep as chaos, are those waters rolled 

In starless, stormy tides that break in cold, 

Fierce floods, and night prevails; and quenching mould 

Encrusts the lamps all shattered in thy hold. 

And cry out in thy pride : " Peace, peace, be still ! " 
And tell your heathen maxims o'er, until 
The tower of Reason crumble ; all your skill 
Soothes not that raging sea — and never will ! 



EROTHANATOS. 49 

Then turn in your last stronghold, when the sleet 
Drives stinging to your blood, when round your feet 
The surges roar, and cry : " Oh ! comfort, sweet 
Philosophy ! " in face of your defeat. 

And vaunt of intellect, tliat grinds beneath 
Her heels the myths of gods, that conquereth 
The universe, expounds its laws, and saith, 
*' Am /not God ? " then falls the prey of Death. 

Alas ! the voiceless spirit of the grave, 
Who wraps the shrouded dead in her damp cave, 
Nor sighs, nor sobs, nor answers us who wave 
Imploring arms, and knowledge of her crave. 

Alas ! all lovely flesh decay hath torn. 

Alas ! the midnight, and alas ! the morn 

That gilds our follies^ — passion, hate, and scorn — 

Alas, my Soul ! that ever we were born. 

The stars are blazing in the midnight — come. 
My Soul, and walk abroad with me ; thy numb, 
Sad spirit must be quickened ! in the sum 
Of universe what art thou ? — peace, be dumb ! 



50 EROTHANATOS. 

Behold the cloudless night ! when thou hast traced 
It limitless, consider what a waste 
Of travailing is grief. The Power that placed 
Those firmaments the fall of her embraced. 

And gaze until the young flame of the morn 
Burns golden in the East, and darkness, shorn 
Of all her stars, fades in the West, forlorn, 
And sunlight tips with fire heaven's outmost bourn. 

Then cry, sweet sunshine, pity, pity me ! 
And woods, and meadows, clouds, and flowers, and sea. 
Smile pleasing ! sing, birds, in the leafy tree, 
And help me to break bond with Misery ! 

The night is dead ; oh ! let this die, of mine. 
That wears my life out ; pour on me Thy wine 
Of gladness, and my Soul shall spread and shine, 
A reliquary rich with gems of thine. 

I drink the cup of sorrow to the lees 
Of pain — I drain the dregs — oh ! give me peace, 
Great God ! as night's oppressive shadow flees. 
My Soul from Desperation's gloom release ! 



EROTHANATOS. 5 1 

Sky-fallen Star, that inward glows and gleams, 
Divine infusion, dropped from heaven that seems, 
Guide thou to us our spirit loves in dreams. 
Transpierce us with their beautiful eye-beams ! 

Ravish our eyes with beauty, and our ears 
With lavish music ! startle these wan fears 
Of ours with lustral suns, until appears 
God's glory, breaking on us from the spheres ! 

Inspire us with the sound of harps ! the beat 
Of rolling timbrels tuning the swift feet 
Of marching angels, till we rise and greet 
Celestial Love in conversation sweet ! 

In vain ! I close the lids of weary eyes 

On throbbing, sightless balls, and from the skies 

Nor light, nor music floats ; my spirit lies 

Like withered leaves o'er which November sighs. 

I walk knee-deep in snow ; the north winds steal 
Along my bones how keenly, and I feel 
A thousand pricking pains like hail-stones reel 
Against my heart, where ghostly church-bells peal. 



52 EROTHANATOS. 

The .wintry blast roars from the sky of gray, 
The pale huge drifts are blown up ev'ry way, 
And shrill the pines, like drivelling seers who say 
*' Thus do earth's beauties vanish day by day." 



Ice in the lands, and lands of ice at sea ; 
Cold in the clouds, but colder is in me 
Griefs season, wild as northland winters be- 
My Soul snow-bound, a-chill with agony. 



All in a frozen shroud my dead love lies. 
And over her low head the loud wind cries. 
Shrieking her funeral dirge that swells and dies 
Above the barren fields in the bare skies. 

No glow of cottage lights afar or near 
Invites me home ; no welcome hearth or cheer ; 
No friend to clasp my hand ; no spot so dear 
As this snow-heaped mound forsaken here. 

Beat, beat, dark winter, on the wanderer's head. 
Assail his heart till its last drop is bled ; 
Smite the dim eyes till their last tear is shed. 
And slay him where he weeps above his dead ! 



EROTHANATOS. 53 

Only the winds endure the cold, and go, 
Like icy demons, chanting through the snow ; 
The earth and sky are mute with frost, and so 
Men's hearts are stiff with pride as mine with woe. 

Be quiet, earth, one moment, and ye bleak, 
Hoarse winds sing low — for Sorrow's sake be meek — 
And I will place against her grave my cheek. 
And feel a tremor if she thrill or speak ! 

She lieth still, white-sheeted in a corner 
Of her low cell, where Death's slow wear hath worn her 
To thinness, and her bosom is forlorner 
Of warmth than mine, who wander here and mourn 
her. 

O black and freezing night ! O bitterness 
Of spoiled life, and grief, to wild excess 
Torturing my heart ! wound me till I know less 
Than no man of Love's sorrow and distress ! 

O scourging willow-branches, bend and break ! 
Nor groan above the dead, lest they awake 
Disturbed, and their transmuting bodies shake 
To atoms, slow as snow-fall, flake on flake. — 



54 EROTHANATOS. 

Or does the Lord of silence reign o'er them 
In sceptred peace ? doth dreamless rest contemn 
Sensation ? then the church-yard hides a gem 
To dig for ; — seek ! and who finds not, condemn. 

Dishevelled willows, lash and howl and strain ! 
You only rasp my griefs harmonious pain 
With discord, for they heed nor wind, nor rain, 
Secure from storms that shall not harm again. 

The roots of flow^ers distribute sap like myrrh 
Among them, odorous, and if they stir. 
It is the heart's love-instincts that recur 
To memories of pansies. Down by her 

Blow all the gladd'ning flowers of Summer ; light 
Green vines envelop her, and bluebells bright 
Conceal the darkened eyes they matched ; and right 
Against her cheek droop roses red and white. 

The fire of youthful blood must linger there, 
So warmly it compels those roots to share 
A summer glow, and woos them, blooming rare, 
To clasp her form and cluster in her hair. 



EROTHANATOS. 55 

No ruffling din descends of joy or woe 

To startle those inhabitants, I know ; 

But there the murmurous streams that deeply flow 

Create perpetual music, sweet and low. 

The sun beams not on them in all his round, 
Nor tremulous glow of moon or stars is found ; 
Still virginal beauty dw^ells in flowers and sound 
Where young hearts gather, even under ground. 

And they dissolve in perfumes, such as cling 
Where sweet-briar twines to any crumbling thing ; 
Their bodies clad in garlands, as when Spring 
Doth screen with life Death's hideous ruining. 

Conceive them not as humid flesh that breeds 
Foul worms ; but nuns in lodges where no beads 
Are told, and cloistered hermits whom Time heeds 
No more — aye, clad in isolation's weeds. 

The sun, in sailing West, his course hath taken 
Through deeps of cloudless blue ; the hills, forsaken. 
Are silent as the snow, while I awaken, 
As desolate as they, but sorrows-shaken. 



56 EROTHANATOS. 

There breathes from all a quiet when winds keep 
From blowing, and the drifted white is deep 
In hedge and wood and gorge, on plain and steep, 
That is not mine who fret and pine and weep. 

Low in the West, beyond the landscape drear, 
How glorious sunset's fiery beams appear ! 
But my sad heart frames for my latest year 
A sunless, stormy twilight, more severe. — 

Without, or evening star of roseate beam, 
Or crescent moon of silvery rayed gleam ; 
And wind and drenching rain will best beseem, 
And rushing storm, and lightning's lurid stream. 

But lo ! the winter flies ; the dusky pine 
Is tipped with emerald buds, and cedars shine 
In youthful green — oh Parent-Love divine. 
Beget new feelings in this breast of mine ! 

Breathe on my Spirit, thou life-giving Power ! 
Awake Love's buried seeds as with a shower 
Of April rain, and all my heart this hour 
Shall swelling break, and blossom into flower ! 



EROTHANATOS. 57 

I hear the bluebirds singing from the thorn, 
I see their pinions flashing through the morn ; 
O winged Peace and Joy that fled, forlorn. 
Last Autumn, with these birds and buds return ! 

O fly, thou haunting Sorrow ! On glad wing 
To clothe the naked world, creative Spring 
Revives the year, and flowers awakening 
Rejoice : so thou, my Spirit, rise and sing ! 

Read in the new-born grass a hope ; Vv^hat we 
Miscalled dead was slumbering quietly, 
To wake in loveliness ; by this sign she. 
More beautiful, hath risen to fairer be. 

Sing ! for the sun is golden overhead, 

And violets are blue, and looses red 

As ever ; sing in praise of God who spread 

The skies, and gave thee memory of thy dead ! 

Sing with the babbling brook that joyous cleaves 

His bubbling way, where many a blossom weaves 

And trailing bloom of vines, and sparkling heaves 

Among his flags and dripping alder leaves. 
3* 



58 EROTHANATOS. 

Oh, sing with all the birds that breast the air, 
And twitter in the wood, and woo, and pair ! 
Oh, sing that lilacs blow so many and fair, 
And burn Spring's incense on the balmy air ! 

Lie in the fields and watch the clouds float by, 
And think how deep the sea, and heaven how high ; 
What vast intent hath God in us, and why 
Hath He crowned man with Reason's dignity ? 

The ocean reasons not, nor infinite air. 

And space — where planets blaze, and meteors glare 

On suns and starry systems — hath no share 

In thought : to us is given what lacketh there ; 

To think. The Spirit of God within us lies, 
And is the action, thought ; by this we rise 
To knowledge, reasoning, while He supplies 
The vision and the star-lamps to our eyes. 

O gentle Love ! with pillowed head so deep 

In earth where darkness is, 'tis I who creep 

Above thee in the summer grass, to weep 

For thee. Love, where they've laid thee low to sleep. 



EROTHANATOS. 59 

'Tis not the south wind all alone that sighs 
Above thee, nor the dew and showery skies 
That wet thy mould, where he that loved thee lies 
In prostrate sorrow, and with tearful eyes- 

Thy tenderness, thy loveliness no more 
Shall gladden my sad soul ; the days are o'er 
When kisses warmed these lips, and friendship wore 
A smile that thrilled my inmost bosom's core. 

No little hand to press and fondle mine, 
No soft blue eyes like quiet stars to shine 
Regretfully, or pleading ; left to pine, 
I find no love to live in place of thine. 

No smile, no voice like thine, no face so fair, 
No joy with so much sympathy to share. 
No kindness, truth, no innocence so rare, 
No heart so pure and gentle anywhere. 

Beneath wild grass and flowers sleep ! I wake 
And w^atch them drink the dewy winds that shake 
Their buds and leaves; thou bad'st them blow to make 
Me think of thee, and kiss them for thy sake. 



6o EROTHANATOS. 

Lie still, my Love ; the ever-varying year 
Leaves me unchanged ; forgetful flowers may sear 
And go — I still remember thou wert dear ; 
Thy tablet is my heart, thy name is here ! 

I view sweet blossoms fading every day, 
Their spirits rising odorous from decay ; 
I think their loveliness must pass away 
To where thou art, more beautiful than they. 

And where thy spirit is, in what dim place. 
Or bright, I know not ; but my soul shall trace 
Thee out, and know the brightness of thy face, 
And call thy name, and meet thee, and embrace. 

Oh, once again to feel her arms enfold 

My neck, to hear that voice so sweet of old ! 

Oh, once again to kiss her cheek, or hold 

The pulseless hand in mine, though dead and cold ! 

To cherish what remained of her that day, 

When her eyes closed their poor lids, wan and gray ; 

Though but to watch her beauty fade away, 

Still lovely in the pallor of decay. 



EROTHANATOS. 6l 

Oh, sweet and mournful memory of my dead ! 
'Tis dear and gentle grief that bows my head ; 
Regret, through all my life, is perfume shed 
Of bloomed hopes Death crushed with stilly tread. 

'Tis not a pagan sorrow, groping blind 
Through godless ways where only rain and wind 
Sob ever ; but religious grief resigned, 
That dwells in twilight skies, subdued and kind. 

The Southern winds, in blowing from the sea, 
Now stir the grass, and rustle in the tree. 
So like faint footfalls, that they startle me — 
No, no, but thou art dead ; it is not thee ! 

Thou wakest not from out thy dreamy years, 
Thy footstep on the earth no mortal hears, 
Thy voice shall never charm our listening ears, 
Thine eyes weep none, nor ever view our tears. 

The winds may sound along the sea and shore 
Their subtle music, still repeating o'er 
Wild harmonies that soften the sea's roar, — 
But thy voice wakens melody no more. 



62 EROTHANATOS. 

The bluebird piping high on azure wing, 
The robins' and the thrushes' carolling, 
Though joyous, touch my memory's saddest string 
That throbbed exultant when I heard thee sing. 

And yet on them my pleased fancy dotes 
Not idly, for their song-inflated throats 
Enchant my soothed spirit till it floats 
Enraptured, as by thine own sweetest notes. 

Forests and fields are blooming, and, between. 
Rivers run bright, and wild-flowered slopes are seen, 
And earth seems beautiful in living green, — 
But not with that same splendor that hath been. 

There's something that we miss, which brightened day, 
That in the flower and sparkling leaf was gay. 
That beams not now; the ripening summers stay, — 
But what adorned them most has passed away. 

The love that lit the skies, and seemed to rain 
A glory on the world, from hill and plain 
Has vanished, and we sadly look in vain 
For the lost light that shall not shine again. 



EROTHANATOS. 63 

But where thy risen Soul is, and where mine 

Shall rise and mix eternally with thine, 

There I shall see, in firmaments divine, 

That glory, erst glad earth's, more glorious shine. 

Resplendent suns and never-waning moons 
Shall rule alternate midnights and midnoons; 
The days and nights be passed like pleasing tunes, 
And years be cycles of returning Junes. 

The plumage of the warbling birds shall vie 
With blade and flower and leaf and stormless sky; 
The wind shall blow not strong, but, fragrant, sigh 
Through groves and fields where never shrub shall die. 

O'er all the fadeless meadows we shall rove. 
Through echoing hills, with choiring angels move. 
And reign, supreme all blissful joys above. 
In palaces of peace, star-crowned with love. 

Thou hearest now the voices of the kings 
Of earth's dead singers ; spacious heaven rings 
With viols and the harps' unequalled strings. 
While seraphs pause to list on charmed wings. 



64 erothanatOs. 

Oh, hark ! I seem to hear the startling tones 
Melodious, echoed from the stellar zones ! 
Oh, glory, flesh! thy deathless tenant owns 
A voice to sing in heaven, a place on thrones. 

And love is all the motive it contains — 
Its altar-fire that sparkles, and disdains 
The fuel lust that maddens, and enchains 
The soul to ruinous and endless pains. 

Love is the grand religion that adorns 
Its gentle faith, that worships when it mourns. 
That praises when it weeps — not given to scorns — 
And wears its grief as Christ the crown of thorns. 

O Love ! I wander by the midnight sea 

Consumed with burning thoughts of death and thee ; 

My Spirit seems to soar exultingly 

To Heaven — O Love, dead Love, commune with me ! 

Come, while the moon her golden shadow dips 
In the dark waves, ere night to morning slips ! 
Come, Spirit, as this silent dew that drips 
Along the Southern wind, and kiss my lips ! 



EROTHANATOS. 65 

Come in what shape or sound thou lovest best, 
What pulse of motion, or what sense of rest. 
What cloud, or nebulous light, in East or West, 
And I shall feel thy presence in my breast ! 

My heart shall beat recurring measures, glad 
As when of old I met thee, ere thy sad 
Departure, when thy face such beauty had 
That I, for joy of thee, went almost mad. 

I'll hail what medium thy soul employs ; 
I'll know thee in a zephyr's plaintive noise. 
And dwell upon the music of thy voice. 
How faint or low, and, greeting thee, rejoice. 

Let silence bring you, or the thunder's jar — 
In what evinces life or love you are ; 
A shell washed up, a perfume from afar, 
A sighing wind, or mist, or falling star. 

I linger on the strand, and, thoughtfully. 
Behold the red moon, level with the sea, 
Fade down the West — and still recurs to me 
The memory of that light gone out with thee. 



66 EROTHANATOS. 

The moon declines beyond the gloomy wave, 
Her last beam bright as her first rising gave ; 
And so, dear Love, though young, undimmed and 

brave. 
Thy life set in the death-gloom of the grave. 

Sweet earth her blessed motherhood resumes, 
And buds leap laughing from her million wombs ; 
The slow winds are o'erladen with perfumes 
Of opening field-flowers and full apple-blooms. 

The infant corn a leaved youth attains, 
The young wheat promises abundant grains, 
And rising rivers, fed with frequent rains, 
Dash from the hills and wash the sunny plains. 

I cross the clover-field, and seek the shade 
Of elms beneath the hill where I have strayed 
How often, when sad thoughts of her betrayed 
My peace, and mournfully have wept and prayed. 

I love the dark elm-shadows, cool as night 
And dewy at mid-noon ; I love the bright 
Green fields I see, and, far beyond, the white, 
Sharp village spire a-tremble in the light. 



EROTHANATOS. 6/ 

The blackbird whistles in the corn and wheat, 
And pleased, the blooming landscape mine eyes greet 
With welcome, while around me, moist-eyed, sweet, 
Blue violets are peeping at my feet. 

I hear the village children's voices ring 
Gleefully out, mid-summer welcoming ; 
Through bush and glade, in happy pairs they sing, 
And learn their first of love black-berrying. 

O maiden laughers, boyish lovers, this 
Is love's glad prime ! I know the charmed bliss 
Enrapturing your hearts, and what it is, 
Alas, to miss the love ! to lose the kiss ! 

But ye are children, and love only seems 
An azure day, flowers, laughter and sunbeams, 
And soft caresses — these are only gleams 
Of memory that sadden my lone dreams. 

Shout, children, in the joy of youthful years ! 
Sing your love-songs while still your love appears 
A blooming rose ! my laughter, changed to tears, 
My love's a thorny stem, a leaf that sears. 



68 EROTHANATOS. 

Ah me ! my songs have turned to weary sighs, 
For Death bore off my Love, a spoiled prize ; — 
But sing, fair children, while the Summer skies 
Delight the earth, and love illumes your eyes ! 

I love bird-songs, I love the wind-blown smells 
Of hidden flowers ; I love the light that dwells 
In evening skies, I love the sound that swells 
From streams, the soft refrains of village bells ! 

I love the warm breath of the southern breeze, 
And the dim wood's ^olian melodies. 
The chirp of crickets, and the hum of bees. 
And silence, and the crash of windy seas ! 

I love the storm-cloud and its thunderous roar, 

And rain-bright grass when sun breaks forth once 

more ; 
I love the splash of my lithe, dripping oar. 
When caved echoes answer from the shore ! 

But that diviner spirit-love — which fed 
On beauty's aspect till, awakened 
To rapture, it inspired my life, —has fled 
Into the grave where beauty moulders, dead. 



EROTHANATOS. 69 

With Youth's glad love I cannot greet the fair 
Daughters of earth, that charm me unaware ; 
With all earth beautiful, I equal share 
My blasted heart, else haunted to despair. 

And so I sing of life, and love's sweet prime, 

Of earth majestic, and of heaven sublime ; 

But as days darken in mid-summer time. 

Sad thoughts still creep o'ershadowing the rhyme. 

O God, forgive an erring song that strays 
From sadness into cheerless, morbid ways ! 
We know Thou lovest us, that Thou would'st raise 
Our hopes to Thee, and consecrate our days. 

We own Thy means are limitless as space, — 
Thy will confines the orbits, and Thy grace 
Upholds, and yet, there is Thy dwelling-place 
Where one meek daisy suns her dewy face. 

We view Thy terrors in the tempest's ire. 
Thy strength in the wild winds that never tire ; 
Thy beauty in or moon or star admire. 
Behold thy glory in the sunset's fire. 



70 EROTHANATOS. 

Thou'rt in the tears we weep, the prayers we pray, 
In all thought beautiful we think or say ; 
Thy presence can be felt both night and day, 
A conscious Power that rules our minds alway. 

The lilac blooms in May, the crimson rose 
Is June's, and later still, and fairer, grows 
The heavenly lily ; so, as onward goes 
The year, her face diviner beauty shows. 

The promise that was June's, a warm July 
Makes good in grass and flowers of deeper dye. 
And leafier trees, and happier birds on high. 
And longer stormless days, and bluer sky. 

The season swells and ripens, and attains 
To fulness that the Harvest-God ordains ; 
The end is Autumn, rich with fruits and grains, 
Yet selfish man laments, demurs, complains. 

Bewailing still, he garners nothing bright 
Through summer day to cheer the winter night, 
Nor hails the marvels working in his sight 
That prove God's ends, if he would read aright. 



EROTHANATOS. 7 1 

The mind, from ev'ry blossoming shrub it sees, 
Should formulate grand immortalities, 
And trace, through nature, love's analogies 
To life above a resurrected tree's. 

Within dumb nature dwells the unerring power 
That, when she thirsts, draws down the slaking 

shower ; 
'Tis God who drives the wheels of ev'ry hour, 
Whose finger points to heaven in ev'ry flower. 

His voice is ev'ry wind ; the boisterous sea 
Leaps sk)rward, swelling, with His majesty 
Infused : O man. His love smiles out on thee 
From ev'ry leaf of grass, and flower, and tree ! 

By ev'ry singing wild-wood brook I trace 

Remembrancers of Him ; in ev'ry place 

Where green boughs wave sun-brightened, lives a 

grace 
Not theirs, a light reflected from His face. 

He breathes in ev'ry nook where violets nod, 
Or dappled moss adorns the mountain sod ; 



72 EROTHANATOS. 

A wild weed, springing from a stony clod, 
Tells, as no language may, the love of God. 

And in no place, O God, art thou confined. 
To no creed bound. Thou Universe of Mind ; 
In loveliness and awe Thou art enshrined. 
In earth, and sky, and wisest of mankind. 

The oceans hymn Thy praise that never palter. 
The gales and rushing streams intone Thy psalter ; 
Thy temple is creation, and Thine altar 
The sun, whose soul of fire shall never falter ! 

Oh, baffled gaze ! to look into the air. 
Thereby to measure Space, how vain it were ! 
But to conceive Thee, All, is what despair. 
Who art of everything, and everywhere ! 

Back ! shuddering soul of mortal : by thine art 
Imaginary, would'st thou dare impart 
Delusion ? Know'st thou God ? The human heart 
Is man's one province ; from it not depart ! 



EROTHANATOS. 73 

Will man, whose life is one perpetual round, 
Whose outmost limit is his native ground. 
Who glories in a name's impotent sound, 
Dare fix for Thee, Omnipotence, a bound ? 

Oh, make our lives more human ! teach us all 
Compassionate love ! Thou knowest, God, how small 
Our virtue is — when brethren on us call 
For aid, we pass them by and let them fall. 

Oh, make all hearts Thine own, and dwell therein ! 
Expel our wicked pride, and let begin 
Religious work divine, so we may win 
Our bodies from all fascinating sin ! 

Poor substance ours ! a summer season's leaf, 
The frailest aspen, our small life too brief 
To spend its bright hour with a blighting grief, 
Or waste a day, to friendly counsel deaf. 

Then fill us with the wisdom of the sage, 
That we may know ourselves, and tame the rage 
Of sin inherent, that we may engage 
To teach the love-religion to the age. 



74 EROTHANATOS. 

From Thee, dear God, the promise emanates, 
That death is sweet, and dying elevates ; 
And Thine effulgence all-illuminates 
The ghostly vale beyond Death's shadowy gates. 

Then farewell, maiden, spirit love of mine ! 
Sleep thy long sleep in earth, while we repine 
And weep for thee, and drink Regret's sharp wine ! 
Long rest and undisturbed peace are thine. 

Thine the repose of spirits passed away. 
The soul's relapse from weary toil in clay, 
A calm like evenfall to restless day, 
The peace of God that endeth not for aye. 

The passing years pause silent in thine ears ; 
Only the music of harmonious spheres 
Lulls thy long sleep, while still the hopes and fears 
Of earth are ours, and laughters drowned in tears. 

. But we shall see thee as our hearts portend. 
When mutual love clasps love, and friend greets 
friend. 



EROTHANATOS. 75 

When those dread angels earth's doomed mountains 

rend 
With flaming swords, and God proclaims the end. 

But from earth's ashes Love shall rise and bloom, 
And God shall crown her, and she shall assume 
The heirdom of the world, and reillume 
Earth new created in Destruction's womb. 

Thus shall it be, the Seer and Poet saith : 
When earth, renewed and fair, awakeneth, 
There shall be sorrow never, no sweet breath 
Resigned, for deathless Love shall vanquish Death ! 



^6 EROTHANATOS. 



Sadly I sing in the twilight, as shadows around me 
are falling, 
Sad as the tide on the sea-shore, sadder than sea- 
wind sighing ; 
Mournful and low, in the even, afar off voices are 
calling 
Me from these vales of sunset to valleys where day 
is undying. 



Long have I pined in this valley, distressed with its 
sighing and weeping. 
Long has my soul a-wearied of waking, and living, 
and laughter ; 
Sound as a dead man sleeps I would that my life 
were sleeping. 
Then, in death-dreams, I could hasten beyond to 
the bright Hereafter. 



EROTHANATOS. 'J'J 

Mystical voices of twilight, ye thrill me with rapture 
diviner, 
Deeper than love, — than the passionate poetry writ 
in the olden 
Time. Oh, sing me to sleep ! woo Death, with your 
. low, lulling minor 
Chorals, until my life in his opiate wings is en- 
folden ! 



Friends and lost lovers who died while Youth had all 
joys for the giving. 
When the blown flowers seemed fadeless, abloom 
in Life's Spring and Love's Summer, 
Pray to the Power that ordains, that I linger not long 
in my living, 
But with this day expiring be welcomed, a long- 
looked-for comer. 

Spirits that haunt the weird shadows when darlcness 
around me is falling, 
Voices that sob with the tides and sigh with the 
sea-wind's sighing. 



78 EROTHANATOS. 

I would depart with you, loved ones, beyond all re- 
turn and recalling, 
Far beyond sleeping and waking, and death and 
the memory of dying. 



EROTHANATOS. 79 



PART 11. 

Slow sails the Night across the eastern waves, 
The Night with poppy garlands in her wings 
That ever, where she moves, their petals drop 
In slumbrous showers, veiling eyes with sleep, 
And shedding, with their fragrance, peace and rest 
And sweet repose on wearied heads and hearts ; 
Her voice — the vesper-song of lulling winds 
Responsive to the minor chords alone 
Of tender joy, and sadness without pain — 
Bids Laughter weep, and Melancholy smile. 

The laborer from the vineyard and the. field 

Retires, and bleating flocks are gathered home 

At twilight, and the shepherd's cares are flown. 

He goes to rest, or seeks the maid he loves, 

And, with a chaste few kisses, sings, '' Good night ! " 

And sleeps, to still caress her in his dreams. 

O'er field and hamlet, over hill and dale, 



80 EROTHANATOS. 

Night hovers, and the toils of Day are done ; 
Unbroken is the silence of the hour 
Save by the cricket, or the wakeful note 
Of restless bird, or voice of wind, or stream, 
That scarce disturbs the quiet, and seems most 
A portion of the silence and the dusk. 

Night ! dark, restful Night ! you bring to me 
Nor rest, nor slumber, neither joy nor woe, 
But peace and quiet in this thoughtful hour 

Of contemplation, when the heart is full. 
And I would be alone to think my thoughts 
Of her, the loved and lost — not tearfully. 
Nor bitterly subdued, but undisturbed 
To walk beneath the shadows, and the stars 

1 love, and think of her I loved much more, 

And whose green grave they now look down upon, 
As still and bright and high above my head 
As she seems dark and low beneath my feet. 

The lingering twilight fades beyond the hills. 
And deepening shadows thicken o'er the scene ; 
The features of the landscape disappear 



EROTHANATOS. 8 1 

In indistinguishable darkness ; night 

Envelops woods, fields, meadows, mountains, streami 

And by the steep sea-cliffs the crooning waves, 

Unseen, seem rocking their old shores to sleep ; 

And yonder, up the valley, gleam the lights 

Of cottage windows, faint and far away, 

Like stars upon the misty horizon ; 

Above the hills, a little crescent moon 

Climbs up the East and trims her silver flame. 

Scarce brighter than a pleiad ; cloudless skies 

Beam overhead, and not a mist obscures 

The loveliness of night. 

I walk the fields. 

The dear familiar fields my childhood knew. 

But not to pluck May-blooms, nor hear the songs 

Of bird, nor swain, nor lass — as when I joined 

The merriest in the rout, and laughed, and danced. 

And sang the hours away in boyish glee, 

I cannot joy again. O careless mirth ! 

I am no longer young ; these are the fields. 

And these the forests and the hills unaltered ; 

But I, alas ! am not the same blithe youth 
4* 



82 EROTHANATOS. 

Who ran and shouted in those early days ; 
Oh ! I am changed, and know delight no more, 
Nor that pure gladness in the winds and sun, 
The impulse and the raptures of a boy. 

I visit these erst happy scenes by night ; 
I frequent my old haunts among the hills, 
And through the darkness wander like a sprite 
From lonely place to place ; the groaning wind. 
The creaking bat and hooting, homeless owl 
Are the companions of my walk ; I hear 
Their dismal music, and it seems not harsh, 
But soothing to the spirit of my mood. 
For am I not the ghost of my lost youth ? 
And has my heart not fall'n to dust with her 
Who died so many cheerless years ago ? 

I meditate on death, and entertain 

The thought of dying, with the desperate joy 

Of one in love with darkness and the grave, 

And not that I behold in death and gloom 

Oblivion and repose of mortal pain. 

But that I thirst to drain this cup of life, 



EROTHANATOS. 83 

And entering Death's dark valley, so may pass 

Unto its outer walls, and thence beyond. 

To drink the ^waters of the living wells 

Of immortality and be at peace : 

As the instinctive spirit temporal 

Aspires and spurns obstruction, so the soul 

Must penetrate the spheres, and thence assume 

Angelic ministry in those high courts 

Of God, above the change of life and death. 

O Night ! original and parent Night ! 

Thou mother of the constellated orbs 

That sprang a shining offspring from thy womb, 

Conceived in darkness and delivered bright 

And blazing, the first children born to God 

In glory — out of gloom — what time the word 

Of light was uttered, ere the laboring deep 

Gave birth to fire and rolled the sun on high ! 

O Night ! revealer of the Universe ! 

Display thy wonders to my dazed sight ! 

Till my hushed soul, bowed in its shrinking cell 

And trembling at its fearful destiny. 

Doth mutely worship awful God through thee ! 



84 EROTHANATOS. 

Thou Night ! crowned with thy starry coronals 

That gem with Hght the convex of the dark, 

Deep shade which is the arching of thy wings, 

Brood thou upon my spirit like a dove ! 

Quell pain and passion 'neath thy sheltering wings, 

And let my restless heart beat close to thine ! 

Rain thy sweet dews upon my burning brow, 

And breathe on my vexed soul the soothing calm. 

Contemplative, that from thy presence showers 

Ambrosial peace ; and as I walk abroad, 

Be thou Instructor of my soul, and awe 

My lonely spirit with the solitude 

Of thine oppressive majesty, and stir 

This heart impressible, with subject joy 

In thine expansive beauty's sovereignty. 

As I commune with thee, beloved Night,^ 

In humble adoration, still be mine 

Pacific and companionable thoughts 

Inspired of thee ! Oh, still be mine the heart 

To look on death — the dim and coffined sleep 

In starless charnels — not with pallid fear 

And glazed horror in my staring eyes, 

But welcoming seclusion and release 



EROTHANATOS. 85 

From most unhappy days and joyless scenes, 
Still hail the advent of the angelic shade 
With invocations, as I now greet thee. 

I tread upon the graves of thousands dead ; 

My feet are on the dust of multitudes ; 

Beneath me are the vaults and mouldering caves 

Of Death, those echoless and lampless cells 

Where Desolation, throned on funeral heaps 

Of whitening bones, still keeps her ghastly court 

With Silence and Decay, — grim sisterhood ! — 

Among the sepulchred and ancient dead. 

Around me gleam the pale memorials 

Of ceremonious marble, — hollow pomp ! — 

By false, obsequious Adulation reared 

Above much loveless and unloved clay ; 

And scattered round, of perishable stuff, 

The unimaginable epitaphs 

Forget, as they that carved, the virtuous dead, 

And leave no record of their mournful tale. 

The shallow stone-wrought urn that overflows 

With rain and dew, seems shedding proper tears 

For the forgotten, unlamented maid 



S6 EROTHANATOS. 

Whose virtues it extols, whose kith and kin 

Neglect, and weep not for, or disremember ; — 

Ah ! they dismiss lone grief, and take new friends 

Or clasp unto their alienated hearts 

A dearer one ; their eyes that wept for these, 

With brighter smiles, their lips that coldly sighed, 

With warmer kisses hail the newer love, 

Than ever greeting gave the uncherished dead : 

But here one mound, unmarked by stone or shaft. 

Is strewn with sacred flowers of memory 

That every season brings ; the grass is long, 

For tenderly the sod is sprinkled oft 

By loving hands, and frequent showers of tears 

Descend — a votive tribute of true love, 

True to the dead as to the living true. 

Here rest, in one secluded neighborhood. 

Together mixed in equal dust and dust, 

What generations, races, families 

Of men successive, of what various moulds ! 

What sun-aspiring Genius, eagle-eyed. 

That pierced the heavens, or prophesied, or sung. 

Or rent the veil of Nature and revealed 



EROTHANATOS. 8/ 

The secret sanctuaries of her life, 

Or with serene and philosophic thoughts 

Drew God to man, exalting man to God ! 

Here, in the common burial plot, repose 

The wisest and the simplest, best and worst, 

Companioned, indistinguishable all. 

The Statesman, clarion-tongued, the orator 

Whose voice, a living thunder, broke in storms 

Of eloquence that shook the Capitol, 

And roused the Senate like an ocean lashed 

To patriotic swell, or furious, 

Lies with the artisan and villager 

Who dumbly toiled and spake for no applause — 

As low as they, as powerless, as mute ! 

The Soldier, heir of honor, and renowned 
On those grand battle-fields Republican 
Where Liberty was born in fire and blood, 
And was baptized and saved in blood and fire, 
And purged, and immortalized — he fought 
And fell most gloriously, and died not vain. 
But here his relics rest as dark and damp. 



88 EROTHANATOS. 

Afar from camps and plumed and bannered hosts, 

Excitements martial, stirring trump and drum. 

As that poor rural swain, his grave-fellow, 

Who ploughed and sowed and harvested his fields. 

And saw the sun rise over the same hills 

A life-time, knowing War by rumors faint, 

Not by his red and devastating front 

And lightning eyes, destructive in a glance. 

And here the ostentatious Citizen, 

The merchant-prince, of calculating eye 

For golden gain, retires, renouncing trade. 

And speculates no more ; what though his corse, 

Preserved in linens, ointments, musk and myrrh. 

Be sealed in the secure sarcophagus ? 

Soon as his neighbors in or vault, or trench, — 

Poor scholar, clown, or laborer, — shall his flesh 

Become of earth and pass into the soil. 

The Poet, happier in his simple songs 
Pathetic, or the high impassioned strains 
Interpreting the deep humanities 
Of love and sorrow, or emancipated thoughts 



EROTHANATOS. 89 

Of man invoking, by his destined rights, 
To rise unfearful and possess the world ; 
Still, as his weeping rhyme compels the tear, 
Or that Promethean fire of his art 
Inspires the exultant souls of men oppressed 
To most sublime ambition to be free — 
Although remembered and revered withal, 
Here he relinquishes his glowing themes, 
The flame expires, his mighty heart resigns 
Its passion as his subtle mind forgets 
Its lyric tones and epic harmonies. 

Engulfed in these sepulchral catacombs 
And rayless earthen chambers subterrene. 
Forgetful, unmolesting, and subdued. 
Foes meet, and enemies join hands in dust ; 
For feuds are softened in the generous clay. 
All change as one, and one transmutes as all ; 
Their substance and vitality inform 
The leaved herbage with perennial bloom ; 
They live again in grass and vines and trees. 
And those that loved are mingled in one mould, 
And from their twin hearts springs a single flower 



90 EROTHANATOS. 

That blossoms, sole and lovely, in the sun 
Above them, as of old, affectionate 
In their lives wedded, bloomed the flower of love, 
Chaste, beautiful, delightful, unimpaired, 
That shed through all their years perfumed joy. 

I stand beside the grave of her I mourn ; 
My feet oppress the sod that clasps the form 
My arms embraced, and calmly, though in tears, 
I breathe these lamentations. I have passed 
The seas of stormy grief, and stranded here 
Among the dead, a friendless mariner, 
I chant these dirges at the doors of Death. 

thou dim-veiled sister of the Night ! 
Thou solitary Death ! surrender now, 
Dark warder of thy gates, to my appeals 
And supplications ! answer what my heart 

Stern questions ! what mine eyes would dare perceive 
Within thy cavernous retreats, reveal ! 

1 fear not sight of thee, nor grave phantasm. 
Nor ghost, nor skeleton's thin hixieousness ; 
I summon thee, O Death, be thou my guest. 
Or else receive me thine ! I would uncowl 



EROTHANATOS. 9 1 

Thy hooded features, brave thy Sphinxine gaze, 
Imbibe the wisdom of thy dangerous lore 
To very madness, and, adventurous. 
Unearth thy records, and thy covert glooms 
Explore, to learn the secrets of thy doom 
And what our fate shall be, and what the end 
Of earth, thy habitation and thy tomb. 

The World was ever subject of thy sway ; 

Destruction, Fire and Famine, Plague and War, 

Thy ministers, attend in fearful state 

Thy steps disastrous, and the clash of arms. 

And groans, and cities sacked, and flaming towns, 

And crash of wall, and columns' thunderous fall 

Unite in dreadful sacrifice to thee. 

Empires laid waste, and granite capitols 

Half sunken in the deserts of their dust, 

Or buried — as those temples of the Nile 

Egyptian, Nineveh and Babylon 

By Tigris and Euphrates — celebrate 

Thy triumph over Dynasties and Powers 

And Nations numerous, whose lofty arts 

Of architecture monumental still 



92 EROTHANATOS. 

Perpetuate, in desolated lands 

Of sand and ruin, Thee, the vanquisher 

Of feeble monarchs, feebler gods, and men. 

Tribes that have flourished on or land or wave 

Through all Creation's ages thus declined 

And perished ; all that man's presumptive pride 

Has builded to his vain mortality. 

Memorial, thou hast either overthrown 

Or marred with hoary Time's obliteration : — 

The Armies and the Navies of the world, 

Preservers and Destroyers ; Arcadie, 

The gentle, peaceful, simple shepherd's reign ; 

And Rome's colossal pageantry of arms, 

Its tribunals of iron, fire, and blood. 

Created and sustained by conquest dire ; 

And Greece, the purest of the states antique, 

Poetic, learned ; as those dusky realms 

Barbaric in the twilight of the East, — 

Where throve the schools of thoughtful mysticism 

And Asia's marvellous philosophies, — 

Evanished ! and but crumbling monuments 

Or fragmentary chronicles declare 



EROTHANATOS. 93 

Their virtues, or their arts of bloody War, 

Or Peace : to thee the Arcadian dropped his crook. 

The Romish Victors and the Philosophs 

Of Hellas and the mystic Orient 

Surrendered their ambitions and their lore, 

To pass away or leave a meaner race 

To crawl, obscured by their great ancestry. 

To thee all Thrones and free exalted States 
Must bow ; Imperial city draped and plumed, 
And village darkened with the funeral weeds 
Of woe that mark a nation's widowhood, 
Acknowledge thee, though tribute to the dead. 
Despotic Czar, and civic President, 
And Prince, and Serf, and Freeman, one and all, 
Are part of this procession, sad and strange, 
That marches proud or humble to the grave. 

Then shalt thou, Death, invest the visible world, 

And, at the last, shall this sun-poised globe 

Relax its pace, and drop into the void, 

An inorganic ruin, pathless, dark ? 

And thou, Extinguisher, shalt thou become 



94 EROTHANATOS. 

Extinct, this solitary wandering star 

Thy grave when thou art dead and sepulchred ? 

Ah no ! for though mankind shrink at the thought, 

And dread the horrors of the charnel-crypt, 

Thou art most gentle, O mysterious change ! 

Though Superstition and the haunting fears 

Of Ignorance have clothed thee terrible — 

A demon thought in raiment of dismay — 

Thy presence is not awful. Death, thou art 

A horrid name, but thy reality 

Is rest and peace, the vision of a sleep 

Not long, and sweet — a bright transforming dream. 

In which the spirit wakens from the flesh 

And soars, serene and beautiful, to God. 

But still, what though content Philosophy 

Exalt my vision, and I entertain 

Secluded hours with solemn questionings 

And thoughtful search into the deep abodes 

Of Death : what though my lamp-bearer and guide 

Be chaste Religion, and the wings of Love — 

Those plumed vans of immortality — 

Sustain my speculations ! though I pierce 



EROTHANATOS. 95 

The grave and dim futurity unveil, 

From daring flight and philosophic thought 

I still return to weep at this low mound, 

Refusing solace ; here return to wail 

For thee, Beloved ; to weep and think of thee : — 

For still to mourn and shed the faithful tear 

Is human ; but, therefore, with unwet eyes 

To thus remember thee were not divine. 

Oh ! many are my thoughts above thee now, 

And sadly strange ; I cannot seem to think. 

That this young grass, with golden daisies starred. 

Has thrived and withered through so many 

Springs 
And Autumns since its parent sod was closed 
Above thee, buried in my youthful years ; 
It seems but now I saw thy shrouded form 
Before me, and the scent of funeral flowers 
Seems now oppressive in that silent room ; 
I look my last, I kiss the last cold kisSj^ 
My burning tears fall on your smiling face 
So passive and so fair ; I turn away. 
And evermore the beauty and the peace 



g6 EROTHANATOS. 

Of that last look have haunted my regret 
With loveliness that shall not pass away. 

I cannot think wild Winter and his snows 
So many times have stormed and drifted here 
Since that long night of gust and windy flaw 
That saw the light extinguished in those eyes, 
And darkened my young life ; and yet the nights 
Have blown a thousand storms of rain and snow, 
And howling wind, about my houseless head, 
Since when I sobbed upon thy dying breast. 
It was a child that shuddered at the thud 
Of awful earth upon thy coffin-lid, 
Which is a ghostly memory to the man 
Who celebrates thy love and early death. 

The feathered songsters treble in the trees, 
And bush and brake are tremulous with song; 
But, silent as these columns, voiceless, cold, 
I sit and ponder, w^ith down-drooping head. 
A faint and dewy odor from the grass. 
The exhalation of the budding spring. 
Charms ev'ry sense. The current of my life 



EROTHANATOS. 97 

Rolls back, and sparkles in the morning sun 

Of youth, and, dancing like a meadow brook, 

And singing as I dance, my life flows on 

Through slowly widening banks and deepening bed,. 

Where floAvers with laughing eyes peep down at me, 

Or, drooping, kiss my face, or drop sweet buds 

I fondle on my bosom as I pass ; 

And ever wider, deeper grows the stream. 

And higher climbs the bright orb of the sun. 

And thicker and more fragrant, fairer flowers 

Snow down bright petals, and extend to me 

Long, lovely arms, as they would woo me stay 

And wanton with their loveliness ; but swift 

I glance and glide through sun and softening shade. 

The sky reflecting in my tranquil depths ; 

And cedarn branches, dusk as twilight time. 

The funeral willow, and the plume-like pine 

Reflecting as I near the sombre wood. 

I hear the voice of Childhood clear in song, 

I join the jubilee, and laugh and sing, 

And leap along the low and limpid marge, 

And mingle with their childish joy, who twine 

Sweet-brier and primroses to garland Mirth. 



98 EROTHANATOS. 

I Steal through sloping fields with buttercups 

And daisies golden, and through little chasms 

Of rock, festooned with wild-rose vines and starred 

With roses and with moss streaked gray and green ; 

I gleam down little pebbly, laughing falls, 

And nestle in the great gnarled roots of oaks 

Whose giant branches shield a thousand birds 

That swell the Summer's choral melody ; 

And ever where I trip, by sheltering nook 

Or open lawn, with simple voice I sing 

As free as native robin, finch, or thrush ; 

Though not so loud my notes, or tunable, 

Still with the same delight that swells their throats. 

But now a magic voice enchants my stream 

To turn and linger, and, in mid-career, 

I pause along a shelving bank, to list 

A music sweeter than the sweetest bird, 

And dearer than my own ; a Maiden sings, 

And, nearer as I creep, it clearer swells. 

Then silent in I flow, till at her feet 

I spread my waters, and her mirrored Form 

Floats in my deep enamored, and, her smiles 

Reflected in my face, I laugh for glee 



EROTHANATOS. 99 

And brighten underneath my osier shores. 

She sings the song of Childhood as she laughs 

Along the sedge, — but now she starts and shrieks 

Before a Shade who slays her with a kiss 

And bears her captive life to his cold cave. 

My troubled waters darken : now I crawl 

Through black ravines where boulders huge impede 

The dangerous way ; I swirl in deep cesspools 

Through forests wild and lonely, and I break 

O'er rocky ledges where frail lichens cling, 

And waste in clouds of spray ; through haunted gulch 

And gully, over crag and slimy stone 

I shriek like a lost spirit ; poison-springs 

That suck the roots of hemlock, dismal tarns, 

Where vipers nest, and birds of prey, I feed ; 

I surge down cavernous steeps, from ledge to ledge, 

And cliff to cliff, precipitate I pour ; 

I shuddering fall through ever-deepening gulfs 

That yawn and echo loud and noisier still, 

As still I madly plunge in agony 

Of dread suspension and the headlong roar 

From depth to depth, until, oppressed and shocked, 

I spring up, startled from my reverie, 



lOO EROTHANATOS. 

To find myself upon the grave of her 
Who stood beside that river of my dream. 

child of Morning, love of Spring and Youth, 
What hopes of thee were mine, — abandoned now !- 
When I looked forward, with a swelling heart 

Of joy expectant, to the full flower-prime 
Of thy glad womanhood, and hoped to see 
The season of thy ripening beautiful 
And perfect for the harvest of thy days. 
For that grand consummation of thy life : — 
Thy love matured, and glorious motherhood ! 

1 hoped to see thee change from year to year, 
From fair to fairest, and from maidenly. 
Demure and coy, to confident and brave 
And womanly ; whose sympathy were much. 
Whose tear best tribute to a noble deed. 

But whose intelligent aid, and zeal, and love. 

Were most invaluable in any cause 

Of human suffering, or sacrifice. 

Or high ambition. Oh, it were a boon 

Too dear to have beheld thee, dignified 



EROTHANATOS. lOI 

And motherly, among thy little ones, 

The household Queen of homely, tender sway 

So worshipful — too dear for eyes of mine ! 

I hoped to see thee pleasing, wifely, true 

To chastity — that gem of womanhood, 

Out-lustering all the jewels of the world ; 

I did not fear to view thy roses pale, 

Nor thy blue eyes to fade ; for not with these 

Such beauty's charm diminishes or cloys, 

But rather it increases with the fame 

Of sons and daughters, and all generous deeds 

That lend to age a splendor not of youth, 

A beauty by gray hair not dispossessed — 

Pure loveliness that crowns a well-spent life.. 

O Woman ! it is thine, the heavenly art 
To heal the wounded spirit ; it is thine. 
When disappointment rankles in the blood, 
To draw the barbed sting, and raise and cure 
The crushed life with love's sustaining balm. 
When enemies assail, and Powers are moved 
To opposition of our loftiest hopes, 



I02 EROTHANATOS. 

And envious Rage conspires with loathed Shame 

To make lewd havoc of our chaste contents 

And joys and fairest fames ; when Friendship, false 

As Peter to his Lord, denies for fear, 

And points the scornful finger at our woe 

With the unpitying, murderous multitude, 

Oh ! then, with inextinguishable love, 

Divine as Mary's for the Crucified, 

Thou risest, changeless Woman, true as fire 

To its obscured sun, and with the strength 

Of sacred sympathy, the mother-kiss, 

And love's compassionate companionship, 

Thou wardest off grim Cruelty abashed, 

And nursest, on thy pure warm breast, the Soul, 

A-flutter in death's chill, to life again. 

Thou bringest to the dark hour of despair 

Celestial hopes, and lightest up the gloom 

With star-like smiles, and, though discordant thoughts 

Grate Life, thou makest music of sweet words. 

That cheers the heart and soothes the vexed soul. 

O Woman ! laud of thee in Shakespeare's verse 

Were but small compensation ; Milton's line 

Poor-worthy ; the melodious Galaxies 



EROTHANATOS. IO3 

Of English Song, though like the Morning Stars 
Together hymning one continuous theme 
They celebrated, it were not too much, 
In thy one praise, their sphered harmony. 

Oh ! such I fondly deemed this child would be, 

A creature of perfection, earth's best heir 

Of immortality, as God's best mould 

Of purest, finest being on the earth. 

Most fruitful and most fair and most divine — 

A perfect Woman. Oh ! there were such gleams 

Of bright intelligence in her blue eyes. 

Such starry raptures of celestial light. 

Reflected from half-risen orbs of thought, 

That at their zenith must have glowed and burned 

Full-globed of a serene poetic fire, 

Now coldly and eternally eclipsed. 

Oh, thou that would'st have joyed in my joys 

And sorrowed in my sorrows ! thou art now 

To me, as is the memory of Youth 

To Age, a sad remembrance of delight 

And morning, at the solemn midnight hour. 

Thou liest underneath the violets 



104 EROTHANATOS. 

And grass and daisies, dreamless and serene, 
A sleeper in the earthen couch of Death, 
Withdrawn from all the worry of the world, 
While I must waken still, and, evermore. 
Among the dwellers of the hills and fields 
And forests, friendless cities populous, 
And rural villages hospitable. 
Find neither rest, nor joy 'mid tender men 
And loving women ; still must I return, 
With peaceless yearnings of a shattered life 
Left purposeless, and desolated heart 
Ambitionless, to watch beside this cave 
Where thou hast entered, waiting for the stroke 
That severs life and makes me one with thee. 

As seasons change, and the revolving year 

Descends, through russet gleams of Autumn time. 

To sombre Winter's uncongenial gloom 

And cheerlessness, and haggard white despair ; 

But reascending, hand in hand with Spring, 

Weeps through the equinox to blush and glow 

And laugh into the Summer of the sun — 

The joy of flowers, and fruits, and leaved prime : 



EROTHANATOS. 105 

So hath the human heart its periods 

Of dark despondency, its Winter time 

Of stormy, fruitless grief, when dim eyes stare 

Like frozen pools, and life's deep streams are dumb : 

It hath calm nights and long tempestuous days, 

Its melting rains that soften and subdue, 

Its first sweet thoughts that burst like April flowers 

Up through the soil, and then the Summer flush 

And bloom, when Wisdom's sun that warms the 

soul, 

Burns, quickening all the sluggish springs of life. 

And so my heart is shaken as with storms, 

And buried under whitening Winter's snows ; 

And so its waters, as the iced floods. 

Are broken up, and dashed in torrents down 

Its deep-worn channels, as the South wind's breath, 

In March, dissolves December-frozen tides. 

So Summers, Autumns, Winters, Springs return 

With hopes and fears, and passions and despairs, 

As changeable as ev'ry season's skies. 

And various as the hearts and minds of men, 

Where, ever striving in unequal fray, 

Distrust and Faith disturb the life's repose. 
5* 



I06 EROTHANATOS. 

But in an hour comes Death — a quiet hour — 

When all the heart is wearied, and the mind 

That ceaseless thought, is hushed in slumbrous rest ; 

The tuneful voice forgets its charmed tones 

That sweeter sang than w41d-wood bird, or loud 

With eloquence, its diapasons pealed, 

That stirred the passions, or, with softer notes 

Subdued and moved to pity and to tears. 

The eyes that laughed with love or wept with woe, — 

Or, brightening, burned, as sun-approaching stars 

Into the fullest joy of life and love, — 

Wane and grow dim, and in the night expire. 

And it is well. Who yearns for length of days. 

And who cries : '' Death, thou comest all too soon, 

My years are not completed ! I would weave. 

Ambitious, at the fiery looms of Fame, 

A tapestry of dazzling thought, that so 

My name may still out-burn this spark of life. 

And shine among mankind." What vanity 

Is fame ! Oh, what a useless wild desire ! 

To pass from mouth to mouth, an idle word. 

The fashion of a day. Oh, barrenness 

Of fame, that cannot give an easeful hour 



EROTHANATOS. 10/ 

To pain, a husk that cannot yield one grain 
Of consolation to the starveling Grief, 
A mockery, a vapor's emptiness 
That but reflects the sun, then melts away 
As clouds fade in the twilight of the West ! 
Such be not mine ! to waste the precious years 
In thankless labor at the weft and woof 
That, finished, is the wonder of a day. 

Vain-glory is a vampire, and the bane 

Of noble living, for it drags the heart 

To infamy, and sucks its purest blood 

To glut a ravenous appetite. Alas ! 

How few are temperate, humble, satisfied. 

Not mingling with the rushing multitudes. 

Ambitious each to win alone the good 

That all should equal share. To live obscure, 

And earn the daily bread by healthful toil 

At wheel, or axe, or plough is happiness 

Alone ; the simple life, in rural field 

And village spent, can still be grand and pure 

And Christ-like, for true manhood needs not fame 

To vaunt its worthiness and virtues rare, 



I08 EROTHANATOS. 

As true nobility is of the heart, 

And not created, or unmade by fame. 

But ever still the inevitable hour 

Of death draws near ; our feastings and our 

fasts, 
Our joys and sorrows, and our loves and hates, — 
Alas, the hate ! — will be at end full soon. 
The humble and the proud, the kind and fierce. 
The foolish and the wise, within thy vaults 
Repose, O giver of tranquillity ! 
Thou Guardian of the mighty dead of old ! 
The greatest of the earth have followed thee, 
Mute captives, to the grave, and fearing not ; 
The Prophets of young Israel, and her Bards 
Who sang Creation's Dawn among the hills 
Judean while the shepherds watched their flocks ; 
The Grecian Homer, greater than his gods, 
Or heroes, father of the Epic line ; 
Virgil, and Dante of Italia's land ; 
The English Milton greatest of the four, 
With mighty poets — of how many lands ! — 
Philosophers, Observers of the stars. 



EROTHANATOS. IO9 

And Scientists, have died and passed away — 
Should we, then fear to follow in their steps ? 

No ! let it stand as best that all should die, 
Seeing how right is death ; who dare condemn. 
Not knowing, that which is, and still must- be, 
Until the higher Power that made it so. 
And knows, sees fit to change what is so good, 
To better still ? I know this path of gloom 
Doth lead to glory, that we but descend 
In flesh to rise in spirit, putting off 
The body as a garment worn and old, 
To don the robes of immortality. 

O thou eventful Hour, approaching Death, 

And Dissolution, come ye any day. 

Dear guests of mine ! or, if the sleepy night. 

Or twilight of the dawn, or eventide 

Doth more invite your presence, come, and rock 

This tired heart to sleep, that, weary long. 

Has tossed restlessly ! Oh, seal these eyes, 

Observant of bright stars and brighter sun. 

With everlasting darkness, nevermore 



no EROTHANATOS. 

To lighten with the tear, or smile ! Oh, hush 

This feeble voice unmusical, that strove 

With its few faltering notes, distressed and wild, 

To sing of Love and Death, the lofty strain 

Of lamentation — soul-exalting theme ! 

Oh, shield in the protection of thy wings 

My spirit, and enclasp these palsied hands 

And pulseless fingers that with artless touch 

Discordant, and with inexpressive power, 

Have desecrated and rebuked the lyre 

Poetic ! as, with zithern, or soft harp, 

A child might wanton inharmonious, — 

Self-pleased, though jarring the pure-tuned strings,— 

I touch the shell and hear its soul respond 

Melodious to the singing of my heart : 

And so I sang, but with unequal voice. 

This song, and, with a tremulous note, conclude 

What was attempted with forewarning fears. 

But though the unskilful verse be not adorned 

With beauty, and such thoughts as make men weep 

In raptures, it is still memorial 

Of something undelivered in my soul, 

Whose lineaments are bright and beautiful ; 



EROTHANATOS. 1 1 1 

Memorial of love that unto death 

Was true ; memorial of thee, Beloved, 

To whom I consecrate my cloister-life 

Of loneliness, communing with high thoughts, 

But ever loving and remembering thee, 

The beginning and the ending of my song. 



112 WALT WHITMAN. 



WALT WHITMAN. 

O PURE-HEART singer of the human frame 

Divine, whose poesie disdains control 
Of slavish bonds ! each poem is a soul 
Incarnate born of thee and given thy name. 

Thy genius is unshackled as a flame 

That sunward soars, the central light its goal ; 
Thy thoughts are lightnings, and thy numbers 
• roll 
In nature's thunders that put art to shame. 

Exalter of the Land that gave thee birth, 

Though She insult thy grand gray years with 

wrong 
Of infamy, foul-branding thee with scars 

Of felon-hate, still shalt thou be on earth 

Revered, and, in Fame's firmament of song, 
Thy name shall blaze among the eternal stars ! 



TO JOHN H. RAPP. I13 



TO JOHN H. RAPP. 

(On receiving the Congressional gold medal for life-saving.) 

Greeting ! thou heir of an immortal fame 

Above the little clamors small men heed ! 

What though thy merits nor attain the meed 
Of civic honors, nor the loud acclaim 

That hails with thundered cheers a conqueror's name— 
The demi-god of battle whose grand deed 
Of valor hazardous saved in its need 
Disastrous this Republic from the shame 

Of foul disunion — hero still wert thou, 

Of bravest passion and of noblest mould, 
Though palms nor crown thy deeds, nor paeans 
laud ; 

And deathless amaranth shall wreathe thy brow, 
Thy heaven-delighting actions be extolled 
And celebrated in the courts of God ! 



114 TO J. B. N. 



TO J. B. N. 

The lowly ministry of Christ, divine, 

More glories life, and man more elevates, 
Than all the pomp of kings and worldly states. 
Or all the riches of Golconda's mine. 

A good man's deeds are jewels that shall shine 

When gold and purple tarnish : Death awaits 
To strip the king, but whom God consecrates 
For good deeds, He shall robe — such end be 
thine ! 

With prayer and praise God is not best adored, 

Nor with celestial hymn, nor instrument, — 
The truly human is the godliest man ! 

The chosen follower of the gentle Lord, 
Is he of largest heart benevolent — 
Disciple ! Gentile ! or Samaritan ! 



TO J. G. W. 115 



TO J. G. W. 

Oh, that companionship is most divine 

*Of friend and friend ; and brotherhood, more 

dear 
Than love's wild fascination ! year by year 
Great friendships thrive as lesser loves decline. 

Through dark days of distress to soothe was thine, 
When desolate, thou still remained to cheer^ 
And ever still be thou as dear and near, 
And thy best comradeship, as ever, mine ! 

Amid the tumult and tempestuous strife 

Of passionate multitudes, the loud commotion 
Of frenzied factions that disturb this life. 

Divide and clash, like an infuriate ocean. 

Thy friendship breathes a calm which is to me 
Like fountains of sweet water to the sea. 



1 16 JUDGMENT. 



JUDGMENT. 

O Day, when iron Pride shall bend the knee 

And fall with fainting heart ! when Sin shall 

swoon 
With fear of her transgressions, and Hell croon 
Afar with evil joy of breaking free ! 

When suns' shall freeze, and the white glaciered moon, 
A blazing ruin, plunges in the sea. 
And sunders earth, when strength of man 

shall be 
A helplessness, O doomed Day, come soon ! 

And come. Sublime Avenger ! wake the dead 
To judgment till their rising Chaos feels 
And shudders in his gloom ! Thy glory spread, 

Grinding the worlds beneath Thy chariot wheels ; 

Thy locks like thunder-clouds about Thy head. 
The Lightnings chained and chafing at Thy 
heels ! 



VESPERS. 117 



VESPERS. 

The tapers in their golden branches shine 

Like clustered stars along the altar's rim, 
And in an atmosphere of incense, swim, 
Religious as the sky, or more divine. 

My heart is kneeling at the inmost shrine ; 

My spirit fails, my visioned eyes wax dim, 
And, though I chant the psalter and the hymn. 
My feet are on the hills of Palestine ; 

And down by Jordan river I am led 

To Galilee, and hear a mournful air. 
As if one sang for sorrow of her dead — 

'Tis Israel wailing out her heart's despair — 

Then I awake and list, with bowled head. 
The organ sobbing through the hour of prayer. 



Il8 WHITTIER. 



WHITTIER. 

(the abolitionist.) 

A YOUTH whose heart rebelled 'gainst tyranny, 

A man whose soul abhorred a goad or rod ; 
The Poet armed with one great gift of God 
To scourge with fire his land's arch-enemy. 

Arrayed against unholy slavery 

He struck with those inspired men who trod 
Through deadliest peril, to redeem the sod 
From chains, and re-establish Liberty. 

Thy comrades have gone down into the dust 

And silence ; but their deeds shall live in song 
While shine the moon, and stars, and deathless 
sun. 

O Whittier, the tender and the just, 

Brave scorner of inhuman craft and wrong, 
True bard and Liberty's high priest in one ! 



A RINGLET OF HAIR. II 9 



A RINGLET OF HAIR. 

Where is the glossy head that long ago — 

Oh, very long ago, when happy years 

Were earth's and mine, when more of loves 

than fears 
Disturbed my heart's blood in its ebb and flov/ ; 
Where is the golden head I toyed with so, 

And caught this curl with its bright other 

peers 
In hand, and wet them with glad dew of tears, 
Bending to kiss her baby lips below ? 
Gone, did you say ? dead ? . . . . Aye, her grave is 
low, 
Deep in a grassy vale where a white stone 

rears. 
In the place of charnels, where the moist winds 
blow 
Forever, and no one ever heeds, that hears . 

Their dirge ; where pale-faced mourners come 

and go. 
Striking their hearts and weeping bitter tears. 



120 NOVEMBER. 



NOVEMBER. 

Oh, misery of long autumnal hours ! 

The tattered trees wave sighing to and fro, 

Wearily, wearily in the wands that blow 

Over the stubble fields and dead wild-flowers ; 

Out in the meadows pour the chilling showers ; 

Down in the hollows no more daisies grow. 
Drearily, drearily blow the winds, as low 
They sweep the rains that weep as twilight 
lowers. 

Bereaved hearts, how like Autumn ! where still cling 
Tear-dripping memories of the olden days ; 
Glad Summer-time of life, when joy-birds sing 

Through hill and dale, with Childhood in his plays 
High-hearted ; O alas, that anything 
Of Love and Beauty ceases and decays ! 



THE EVENING STAR, VENUS. 12 £ 



THE EVENING STAR, VENUS, 

Thou lonely gem, bright-trembling in the West, 

When is withdrawn the sun's resplendent 

stream 
Of golden glory, fading like a dream 
Of holiness about a sage's rest ! 

Far, orbed light, whose tender sparkling beam 
Is the dim twilight's solitary guest, 
What glow of feeling thou awakenest 
In breasts where young desire doth amorous 
scheme ! 

This is thine hour of triumph on the sky. 

Thou sphered Splendor, where the day grows 

less; 
Thou sacred fire to love, thine altar's high 

In the eternal West, where thou dost bless 
The eventide, as doth a glorious eye 
In woman make supreme her loveliness ! 



122 love's roses. 



LOVE'S ROSES. 

Oh, well thy rosy emblem, Love, is red ; 

Thy wreathed roses hide a crown of thorns, 

That sharply stings the forehead it adorns, 

And poisons the hot blood love's fire fed. 
O rose, remembrancer of hearts that bled 

For thy sweet meaning's sake, what nights 
and morns 

And eves have I kissed thee, despite Love's 
scorns, 

And prayqd since she scorned me that I were 
dead ! 
It is not well that I alone must wear 

Love's cruel crown, since all the roses fell 

To you, fair maid, and plaited thorns my share ; 
Since you rung in my heart hope's funeral knell, 

And kissed the Judas-kiss of my despair ; 

Oh, pitiless, heartless one ! it is not well. 



THE OASIS. 123 



THE OASIS. 

Thou fair and fertile island in the sand, 

Of dewy palms and verdure-hidden springs, 
Cool groves and glades astir with flashing 

wings 
Of tropic birds, led by a blessed Hand 

To cheer the waste with music— vocal band ! 

Heaven bless the palmy shade, the stream that 

sings 
Diviner than a harp's iEolian strings 
To thirsting travellers in the rainless land ! 

They cherish waters, rocks, and trees, and grass, 
Who face Arabia's scorching sun, and plod 
The tentless sands that blaze on all who pass 

Intenser than the sun ; but who has trod 

The green oasis and .not thought there was 
E'en in the desert evidence of God ? 



1 24 AUTUMN. 



AUTUMN. 

The last frail-clinging leaves have fluttered down. 
And shudder in the keener airs that pass, 
Upon thin patches of hoar-frosted grass^ 
Whereon they lie like Autumn's foot-steps 
brown. 

The sunny days of Summer-time have flown ; 

The lingering lights of their last smiles^ alasl 
Are fading, and the winds a requiem mass 
Peal through the woods in sober mourning 
gown, ' 

'Tis Nature's voice soft-breathing on the ear 

Harmonious lamentation, to make sweet 
The ripened death of the full-bosomed year. 

Delivered of her fruits : lo ! where her feet 

Glanced beautiful, she lies 'mid blossoms sere. 
Dishevelled, her lorn motherhood complete ! 



SONNET. 125 



SONNET. 

Alas, my life ! what is in store for thee ? 

Shall ever pleasant Summer seasons make 
Thee laugh for love, or lighten for love's sake, 
When flowers return and June-leaves crown 
each tree ? 

Not evermore, lone life, shall happy be 

The summer days we live ; despair will make 
Thy youth decay ; but, though thy strong heart 

break, 
Be proud, and suffer grand and silently ! 

Be faithful till the end, and who shall know 

The heart is broken if the soul be brave ? 
And who shall say : ^* He loved in vain, and so 

He died a bitter death, Love's hapless slave ? " 
No one shall know, so bury up thy woe 
And shattered hopes deep in the heart, Love's 
grave I 



126 TO M. A. F. 



TO M. A. F. 

I THOUGHT dark eyes unlovely and severe, 

I deemed them haughty, treacherous, untrue, 
And praised one pair of bonny eyes of blue, 
As only beautifully bright and clear ; 

But lo, dark-lustering, thine have made me fear 

Their splendors, and avenged their sisters too 
I scorned, for they have pierced my cold heart 

through 
With fiery wounds, most painful and most dear. 

O dark eyes, you are stormy, and I love you ! 

O dark eyes, you are passionate, and bum 
With quenchless love, if but the power move 
you 

That makes proud hearts consume in love's concern ! 
Be bright, eyes, while the heavens are bright 

above you ! 
And flash, twin stars, as long as I discern ! 



THE MARRIAGE AT CANA. 127 



THE MARRIAGE AT CANA. 

(Built on Crashaw's immortal line.) 

Hark, the glad timbrel and the pealing chime 

Of pleasing harps and reeds ! how sweet and 

clear 
Blithe girlish laughter breaks between, and 

hear, 
The feet of dancers, musical, beat time ! 
They rest ; a Galilean sings a rhyme, 

And each guest listens with attentive ear ; 
But who first praises, walking gravely near ? 
The teacher Christ, of radiant brow sublime. 
" No wine ? " the bride's regretful eyes grew dim. 

"Water!" the Master cried; all sound was 

hushed ; 
And, when the earthen jars were brought to 
Him, 
" The conscious water saw its God and blushed." 
Oh ! never wine like that did ever brim 
Immortal cups since first the grape was 
crushed ! 



